


atlas

by purearcticfire



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: AFTG Big Bang 2018, Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Neil Josten is an Idiot (according to Andrew), Shapeshifting
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-26
Updated: 2018-09-26
Packaged: 2019-07-02 16:16:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 71,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15800124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/purearcticfire/pseuds/purearcticfire
Summary: “Don’t waste my time. When I break your curse don’t kill yourself in the process.”Neil leans forward. Andrew fights the urge to back away in order to maintain the distance between them. This close, the murky brown of Neil’s eyes eddies and swirls like bathwater down a drain. This close, and he looks almost distant. Andrew wonders if he meant to lean forward at all, or if he’s listing from weakness.“When,” Neil repeats, his mouth curling about the word like a secret.Andrew jabs a finger hard into his chest. “Don’t make it if.”(The one where Andrew's a cursebreaker, Neil gets cursed, and nothing is as easy as it should be.)





	1. only child of the universe

**Author's Note:**

> Hi I'm like a whole month late please forgive me, shit hit the fan. I have no idea how this fic got to be this long.  
> Much thanks to mod defractum for organizing this year's event, and even greater thanks to Georgie for the incredibly amazing art (and for being so cool with me not getting anything done on time ever)!  
> find the art [here](http://flowerlezbian.tumblr.com/tagged/go-read-the-fic-omg%21%21%21%21%21)

If Neil Josten loved anything in this world, it was running. The kind under an open sky, burning lungs and the rhythmic slapping of feet, a breeze on his skin—not the running he’d known most of his life, prefaced with _don’t look back_ , a race that stopped and started at motel rooms with the shades drawn and a dozen passports with different names. Both kinds were about his survival, but only one let him truly live.

When he got the chance, that is. His mother had rarely let him leave her side, let alone the room. Taking a jog to the convenience store was too dangerous, too risky, and Mary would have shackled his ankles if she knew the thoughts that ran through his head every time he so much as quickened his pace. The yearning to just start running, to go and never stop, to let his feet carry him away.

 _There is nowhere we can stay where he will not find us_ , Mary insisted, hissing it into his ear at night with one iron arm around him and the other curled around the weapon hidden beneath their pillow.

She didn’t understand. She thought he was longing to find some magic place, some idyllic haven. That running was a means, not the end. She was wrong. He loved running to _run_ , and he was damn good at it.

So, it was only a matter of time before he ended up where all those damn good at running go: the petty races.

He’d seen them from afar more times than he could count—nearly every city had an arena by now—but Mary had never let him close enough to smell the sugar and grease and the gasoline, fumes so thick he choked on them.

He’d found a flyer once, when he was fifteen, stained and crumpled under a market stall while his mother restocked their supplies. It advertised the junior races and the sum awarded to the winners. He listened to her haggle over every bone and clove, and then he showed her the flyer, smoothed out carefully so the number with its triple zeroes would be clear. She’d taken one look, then torn it from his hands. She forbade him from ever participating in a race for as long as she lived _which will be as long as you live too_.

Except she was dead, and Neil wasn’t.

 _He_ was dead, and Neil wasn’t.

He’d sat on the beach, in the sand near where he’d buried his mother’s bones, for hours. Their new identities were still in his backpack, the last name his mother would give him, but he had no idea what to do with them. No idea where to go.

Mary had always had all the plans, but even she had nothing for if the impossible happened—if they won.

And what did Neil win, really? He had nothing, was nothing. He didn’t know how to live without being a son, without having to run. But maybe that was it. Maybe now that he didn’t have to run, he could _run_.

He waded into the saltwater, washing off the blood and ash, letting the Pacific baptize him Neil, Neil, Neil, with each swell of the tide. Then he trudged up the shore, past his mother’s grave, and followed the road into the city, then followed the crowd to the arena.

San Francisco’s arena was huge, the largest structure Neil had ever stepped foot in. The crowd provided anonymity, but the crush of people activated the paranoia he’d spent the past eight years learning to breathe by. These races, the petty races, were meant to be smaller, organized for individuals into heats meant to showcase potential runners for the relay teams that made up the big events. They were a rookie’s foot race, and no one had expected them to gain the popularity that they did. That popularity meant more prize money though, and Neil needed that if he wanted to sleep in a bed again.

So he’d signed up for the race. Lined up. He’d looked pathetic, fraying and shivering, surrounded by lithe athletes who had all trained for this. One of the jumbo screens floating over the stands listed all the current bets at play, and Neil could see at least a dozen in favor of him dying first. Small and skinny, and no one had ever heard of anyone who looked like him running in this circuit before. A total amateur, bound to get trampled with the starting shot.

Neil had grinned, stretched, and waited in position with the rest of the runners, tense, coiled like a spring. He repeated the rules to himself under his breath. He was fast, but he wanted to time this right.

The starting gun fired; several of the other freshies Neil had been lumped in with flinched and jumped, but not Neil, whose lullabies had been screams and gunshots. He was off, he was sprinting, he was darting and weaving around people glowing with potions and painted with cheetah spots. The boy in second had a satyr’s furry legs and hooves, and the girl in the lead tore toward the finish, flickering from human to bear. Other runners were sprawled in the dirt in her wake, mauled or swatted out of her path. Neil poured on the speed and overtook the satyr boy. The bear started to slow, flagging as the girl tired from sustaining a shift to such a powerful form.

He’d seen her at the start. Her shifts were slow, and the rules dictated runners must cross the line in human form. If he could pass her while she was in the midst of shifting—

The bear’s shoulders dropped a foot, the fur of its back thinning and receding as bones and muscles roiled beneath her skin. Without hesitation Neil threw himself into a shift of his own.

In the fleeting second when his paws first touched the earth, everything felt right again.

He was lean and sleek, streamlined, made for this. His greyhound outstripped the girl as her human feet landed on the dirt, and he rocketed toward the finish line with her on his heels, tail lashing at her knees. The commentators were a drone, the crowd was a roar, his panting matched his heartbeat as he launched himself into the air, into a leap, into a shift—

—and tumbled over the line to crash in human skin.

He lay there half a second, not even that, before he scrambled out of the way of the rest of the pack, who would still trample him if he remained there.

Slowly the pounding of his heart and the rush of his blood in his ears faded, and the shouting and screaming of the crowd and the race officials filtered back in. His skin still tingled from the quick shifts, and his whole body buzzed with pride. On the big screens footage of his last minute shift looped over and over. That was Neil. _Neil_ had done that. He gazed out at the crowd. He could only see the fuzzy faces of the closest rows, the trackside seats—

He froze.

That woman— _no_ —

She turned again, replacing her gaudy sunglasses on top of her head, and Neil released the breath he’d been holding. He could’ve sworn he saw one of _his_ people.

The knot in his gut tightened instead of loosening. He glanced up at the screens, still projecting him and the sliver of his face they’d gotten. He focused on the image and raised his arm. He brought it down in a slash, and the video dissolved from all the screens at once.

At the same time, pain suddenly flared in Neil’s chest, white hot, and he blanked out in the shock of its acute intensity. When he came to, he was doubled over in the dust, and the pain had faded to a throbbing burn. He rubbed his chest under his shirt, and when he lifted his hand, it was wet and warm with his blood.

His wound had reopened.

He stumbled off the track to the locker room where he’d stashed his bag. Once he collected his money, he ditched the arena and headed for the nearest bus stop. _He_ may be dead, but his people were still out there, and they’d be looking for Neil. California was too close to Seattle, where he’d fallen. Neil had been stupid to linger here, to pick such an ostentatious venue and make such a spectacle. He bought a bus ticket and a bottle of hair dye and kept silent vigil over the rest of the passengers as he plotted out what to do next.

Obviously he’d race again. He’d just have to be smarter about it. Smaller arenas, small towns, no flashy tricks. Come in third or fourth, a good enough placing that he’d still get a slice of the pie, but not enough to draw attention to himself. That would be the hardest part—losing on purpose. Neil clenched his fists. His skull thudded against the window, a rapping reminder of where he was: on a public bus headed to nowhere. He uncurled his fists, smoothing out his hands and some of the indignity.

He couldn’t bring himself to abandon his mother’s rules yet. _Don’t look back. Don’t trust anyone._ They were ingrained, beaten into him, a conditioned response honed through their years. They’d kept Neil alive long enough to see his father dead, and they were the origin of Mary’s final edict.

_Don’t slow down._

Neil pressed his nose to the glass and imagined being out there, running alongside the bus, on four legs, on two, on a pair of wings. He ached for the next arena, and it wasn’t what his mother had meant, far from it, but she’d raised him to be defiance in all but name.

Mary’s rules were his now, and well.

There was a reason she had to beat them into him.

A billboard loomed into view on the side of the highway, rising over the scrubby hills. In bold letters it invited everyone to come enjoy the newly remodeled track out in the dunes. Neil grinned. Something in his chest burned.

That was six months ago.

Today Neil can barely see through the thick clouds of dust. There’s some pegasus race on the track now, flinging the powdery sand into the air. Around him the crowd clamors, screaming for their favorites even though they can’t see any more than Neil. He props his feet up on the rail and settles in to wait.

He could go back to the locker room. At least there his ears wouldn’t be ringing from all this noise. He stays where he is in the stands. The locker room means conversation and camaraderie and the other contestants acting like they’re all there to be friends and not win the purse. Even as the sole person not on their feet, he still fits in better in this crowd than he ever would trying to be someone’s _friend_.

The crowd cheers as a horn blares and an air elemental clears away the dust, revealing a blood red pegasus prancing across the finish line. The rider on his back throws his arms in the air with a yell, which wins him another wave of roars from the stands. Neil folds his arms. With all the stringent regulations on how much airtime and what maneuvers are allowed, there’s no great victory here. The pegasus races can’t be anything but boring, not when he’s seen the fury of the _capaill uisce_ his mother could command.

The victor makes another triumphant lap, and then the horses are shuttled off, back to trailers and stables. People in the arena’s charcoal gray start sweeping the track, earth mages raising the ground, packing it.

That’s Neil’s cue.

He shuffles out of the stands, letting the crush of people carry him down. Once he’s on ground level, he slips off toward the registration tents to check in and get his markings.

The markings are different at every arena. Sometimes it’s a colored handprint smeared on your face, a paper number taped to your chest, a jersey, an anklet. Sometimes they tag you with magic or layer a fake aura over your skin. And sometimes, like now, they do nothing but chirp “good luck!” and hand you a dingo totem.

Neil stares at it sitting in the palm of his hand. “What is this?”

The girl behind the desk looks back up from stamping paperwork. “It’s a dingo totem!”

Neil grits his teeth. “What’s it for?”

The girl blinks, like no one’s ever asked her this before. “A blessing? From the Dingo?”

“Right.”

“You know, the Dingo? The town’s patron?”

He’d probably seen a sign about that coming into town. “Uh huh.”

The girl giggles. “You’re not from around here, are you?”

Neil forces a smile. “Just passing through.”

“That’s too bad.” She shuffles the papers. “Before you leave, maybe I could catch you up on everything you’re going to miss out on.”

Neil has absolutely no desire to learn the history of the dingo’s patronage of the town. “I’m leaving pretty soon actually. Thanks, anyway, for the, uh, totem.”

The girl blinks again. “Oh. You’re welcome.”

Neil leaves the registration tent as quickly but casually as possible.

He tucks the totem into the inside pocket of his jacket. He’ll probably ditch it once he passes the town limits, but maybe he’ll get extra points if he shifts into a dingo during the race. Crowd favorites always get a little extra cash on the side, even if they come in last place.

He stretches behind the equipment tent, then joins the other contestants at the starting line. They’re all bigger than him, which isn’t really a surprise. Only one or two look like real contenders, with a few obvious amateurs milling about the edges of the group and the rest comfortably average. He thinks he probably needs to stick to weaker shifts to make it believable; they’ll be expecting that kind of showing from him anyway, given his size.

The drumroll starts, its thundering beat mirrored in the percussive thumping of his heart. This. This buildup, this moment before the gun goes off, his body a live wire of anticipation—this is his life, his reason for being, for what comes _after_ —

_CRACK._

The starting gun goes off, and Neil springs forward.

Around him chaos bursts to life, roars and flashing lights and metal clanking. He hears chanting and a bell’s tinkling as street magic mixes with traditional arts, all of it underscored by the pounding of feet, paws, claws, and hooves alike. Blessings, enchantments, talismans—none of it compares to the fluid shift from skin to skin of Neil and those like him. He hangs back, human for now, gauging who is made for endurance and who is made for dead sprinting at the end. Some are already burnt out far too soon, and Neil leaves them behind, wriggling into the midst of the middle of the pack.

It’s an easy pace. He starts to outstrip the rest, heart quickening with excitement at the real challenge ahead.

Well, as real as it can be, when he’s determined to lose.

He catches up to a girl he’d marked at the beginning, the hair of her goat legs now caked with dust. She’s either a satyr or talented at charms; he can’t see the top of her head to check for horns. He takes a deep breath through his nose and nearly stumbles as the scent of mock orange hits him, all sweet and citrus and _wrong wrong wrong_ here—

and he’s not here he’s

crouched in a corner of the greenhouse while his mother digs through pots he’s never seen before until she finds one with delicate white blossoms

shining a flashlight on the shrubbery while she rips handfuls of the flowers off, shoving them in her pockets, his pockets, the crushed petals in her hand releasing a fragrance like oranges

holding still as Mary smears paste over his cheeks and forehead, her fingertips sweeping from the mortar to his skin over and over, her knuckles still dusted with pollen

slipping a bloom under his tongue because there’s no time for anything else, for any other way or ritual, praying he doesn’t need to speak, that he doesn’t swallow the flower and lose this meager protection

Neil blinks. The mock orange still hangs heavy in his nose, and he grips lucidity with both hands to keep from crashing back into memories.

He’s still in the race, body moving on autopilot. Ahead first place and second are all but claimed, and beside him the goat-legged girl pants, flagging.

He coughs, choking on the orange that cloaks his throat and lives in his nose. Goat Girl turns at the sound, brow furrowed, and reaches for him, the picture of concern. He tries to dodge but his head spins and her hand lands on his upper arm.

The touch sears him like a brand and Neil lights up with pain _a hot poker in his shoulder_ every _bones shattering_ pain _bullet ripping through him_ he’s _blades carving into flesh_ ever _fire eating him alive_ known.

He hits the ground hard. The impact jars through him, shaking loose more memories. The ground vibrates with dozens of feet. An oncoming horde. And a single pair of hooves stepping toward him.

_Go go go get out of here_

He shoves himself into a different skin and scrambles up on all fours. He’s almost flying as the ground changes beneath his paws from dirt to grass to asphalt to gravel to dirt again as, with every bit of speed and strength he has, he puts as much distance between him and the track, him and the Goat Girl, as he possibly can.

His entire body, whatever it is, some cat or dog, Neil can barely tell through the pain still blinding him, aches. And this is _wrong wrong wrong_ because pain is not supposed to go with you from your human skin. Neil knows that it will be so much worse if he changes back, but he also knows that the wrongness is a sign he needs to fix this and he can’t do that in another form.

He crawls behind a tent and forces his body back into a human shape. Fresh pain tears through him. He bites his tongue nearly in half smothering a scream.

But he can’t rest yet. He jerks at the zipper of his runner’s jacket until he can reach the inside pocket. His trembling fingers close over the invisibility charm. A simple little spell, one he’s used dozens of times, but his nerves, screaming, ratchet up another decibel, and he tastes gasoline.

Black swallows his vision, and he’s under.

 

 

There is a haze. In it his thoughts are wispy things. They dissolve and drift away like pieces of clouds every time he tries to reach for them. There is a cold and heavy darkness. He sinks like a stone. His body remembers the arctic, though he never swam in its icy waters. And there is magic.

Through the haze, through the cold and heavy darkness, magic tickles and twists through his unconscious. With the instincts of a dream Neil strains for it. Moving like a glacier, as slow but as powerful, he grabs a tail and brings it up to his face. The tail flutters against his cheek. Language not his own fills his head, magic’s fleeting and broken vernacular.

 _Orange, mockery,_ it insists, _too close, touch you, bad, bad, wounds, blood of years, blood of tears, blood of fears_.

And then again, _orange, mockery, too close, touch you, bad, bad, bad…_

The cold swells. He loses the tail, fingers too numb to hold onto anything: his magic, his mind, himself.

 

 

He comes to with a boot in his ribs. Before his eyes even really open he’s curling away from it, pulling his knees up to his chest while his hand goes inside his jacket.

“Easy,” a man barks. “Is this your bag?”

Neil peers up at the man, broad and barrel-chested and gray-haired, and at the black duffel bag dangling by its strap from his grasp. Neil’s black duffel bag. He makes no move for it.

The man nods. “Here, take it.” He extends his arm, waiting for Neil to accept the bag for a full minute before he realizes that’s not going to happen. With a grunt, he drops it onto the ground instead and steps backward.

Neil hooks his foot in the strap and drags the bag across the grass toward him. He rolls to his feet and snags it in one fluid movement, slinging it over his shoulder. His eyes never leave the man.

“The arena’s closing. You can’t sleep here. If you need a place, I can give you the names of a few shelters—” The man cuts himself off, staring at Neil or something behind him. “Are you all right?”

 _Does he think I’m an idiot?_ It’s a classic diversionary tactic. Neil moves his thumb over the lever of the switchblade he clutches in his hand.

The man’s frown deepens. He’s definitely staring at Neil now, not off into the distance. “Son, just tell me that isn’t blood.”

Neil starts. He reaches for his chest first, patting at his shirt and expecting to feel it wet, glued to his skin. He has so many scars there to reopen and soak him through. His shoulders bunch at the mere memory of that pain, of every wound splitting open—gone now. _Gone_. The worst pain he’s ever known, and he hadn’t even registered its absence.

He shouldn’t even be standing now.

 _Adrenaline._ But it isn’t. This energy doesn’t come from a survival response triggered by the man standing across from him. It’s how he feels on a normal day, as if he wasn’t just laid low by the agony of the past eighteen years.

His own health unnerves him, the lack of markers on his body even moreso. No blood, no bruises, no ridges of fresh scars underneath his clothes.

The man gestures to his face. Neil prods at his jaw, his cheeks, traces the bridge of his nose. His eyes aren’t swollen and nothing hurts. Maybe he is an idiot, sitting here poking himself like this. He grimaces, and the skin above his lip stretches and cracks. Except, when he touches it, it’s not skin. And it’s not blood either.

Tacky and viscous, residue clings to his fingers when he pulls them away. Not blood. Black blood.

_Blood of years._

Coming from his nose.

“We’ve got to get you to a hospital.”

Neil backs away, rubbing his sticky fingers off on his pants. Black blood means one thing, and it’s nothing a hospital can treat.

The man reaches out, pleading, but pointedly plants his feet. “Jesus, this is not the time. You need help!”

“I’m fine,” Neil says. For now.

“You aren’t. I know a sage—”

Neil scoffs. He halfway turns to walk away. This man isn’t a threat to anything but Neil’s new time schedule. He calls back, “You know shelters, you know sages, but I know men like you. Always willing to help until it means getting off their ass and actually doing something.”

He starts walking, not waiting for a reply, and not getting one even if he was.

The doctors mending his broken bones, the teachers slipping him lunch money, the men in dark suits who’d met his mother in the middle of a desolate park while he swung on rusted chains. This man here. They’re all the same type of person, the passive killer. Neil used to hope because of their kind smiles and soft voices, and then he used to hate because of their idleness and hypocrisy. Disappointment left deeper scars, taught him better, than Mary’s beatings about running his mouth to pseudo authorities.

His fault for not believing the bedrock of her rules: survival. Everything was about survival. The line between what you could live with and what you couldn’t.

Neil hitches the bag higher on his shoulder. He glances up. Floodlights blot out the stars overhead. A waxing moon hangs heavy and dull behind them. Beneath his feet dew already clings to grass in its cross-sections of domain between the dirt tracks and gravel paths. The sun was just tilting over the curve, slipping off the needle point of noon, when his race started. He slept for hours out in the open.

As he nears the front gates of the arena, the lights dim and shut off one by one, darkness spilling in to fill the empty pockets. The constant drone of machinery and generators fades away. The arena powers down for the night, and the extra security powers up.

The air ahead of him shimmers for a second. A ward, activated by the graveyard shift, or in place of it. Neil keeps walking. The trick to passing through a ward is to act like it’s just a door to a place you’ve been a thousand times before. These simple wards, anyway. Wards on public places are usually as flimsy as a flier or sticker asking you not to enter, easy to ignore or not even notice.

Other wards require a demolitionist’s approach. Breaking it down, blowing it up. The best wards, the strongest wards, _Neil’s_ wards, accept no crossing. They are made for death before penetration. The only way to break one is to kill the caster.

Hence the overabundance of scars.

Neil quickens his pace. He needs to get somewhere he can put up wards, assess damage, and figure out what the hell happened.

“Hey!”

Neil slides the switchblade back out of his pocket. He adjusts his bag so it won’t hinder him when he runs.

“The arena’s closed! You aren’t supposed to be here!”

The voice doesn’t match the man from before, if Neil hadn’t been already convinced this was someone new by their choice of words. Probably a night guard.

“Hey! Stop! What are you doing here?”

He’s almost to the gateway, lacking any actual gate but framed by a wooden arch and bracketed on either side by two limestone statues. The ward stretches between them and then makes a gentle perimeter around the arena. From this angle, the stone worn and grayed, Neil can’t discern their subject.

“I’m talkin’ to you! What are you doing?” the guard yells. The gravel crunches beneath their feet as they run after Neil. “Are you hard of hearing or just stupid?”

Neil grinds to a halt and whirls around. “What does it look like I’m doing? I’m leaving. Weren’t you the one who just said the arena’s now closed? Or did I mistake you for someone with brain cells?”

The whiskers on the guard’s chin quiver. A rope materializes in his hands. “I’m gonna ask you again. What are you doing here?”

Neil rolls his eyes. “Leaving. Why else would I be headed for the exit?”

The guard twists the rope.

Neil drops to a knee. “Hey, hey, no need for that,” he says, scooping up a handful of gravel and dirt. The guard steps closer. “I’m calm, I’m compliant—” They uncoil the rope, and Neil flings the gravel up into their face as he shoots to his feet.

He hears a roar and sprints for the statues. The nape of his neck prickles, and he ducks under a bolt of energy that stands all the hair on his body on end. Another flies past to his left. One smashes into the path ahead of him, sending a spray of rock and pebble six feet into the air. Neil throws up an arm to shield his face.

The wards tickle as he punches through them, all momentum and deteriorating balance. The second he clears them, klaxons blare, bursting shrilly into the night, broadcast from every speaker in the arena. Neil glances over his shoulder in time to see the wards’ shimmery surface ripple. On the other side the guard swears, hands alight with those crackling bolts. Two silhouettes join them. More start to peel away from the shadows, the entire night shift coming out into play.

Neil isn’t worried about one guard, close or far, or even a handful of them. If he has to, he can hold his own, even though he prefers making a swift exit. Mary taught him to fight worse men and women than these. He can beat a few grunts at a race track. It’s the numbers that bother him.

If they surround him, pen him in, or if they have someone stationed out by the fence before the highway, or a goon patrolling the parking lots in a golf cart—

If the pain sets in again—

The air sizzles suddenly, and Neil dives to the right. A bolt just barely grazes him. His nose fills with the scent of burnt hair and ozone.

He should shift. It would mean leaving the duffel though, and he’s wary, after what happened during the race. Still, it’s his best chance at getting out of this clean.

His feet hit concrete. He leaps a curb. Asphalt. Two pairs of headlights appears out of the black, one set cutting and winding through the rows of parking spaces and the other tearing around the corner. Shouts from behind him rise over the screaming of the alarms. He lifts the strap of his bag over his head as a horn honking drowns out the rest of the din.

The headlights from the corner resolve into a late model SUV barreling towards him. The driver lays on the horn again. Neil drops his bag, his bones starting to roil, and the SUV screeches to a halt. The interior lights flick on, illuminating the man in the driver’s seat. Gray hair, broad shoulders, a thatch of fuzzy fur for a beard. The man who’d woken Neil up.

The driver rolls down his window, flinging his arm and a shield charm out in the same move. Neil ducks. The shield soars past him, deflecting a hail storm of energy bolts.

Over the rumble of the engine, the driver yells, “Get in!”

Neil weighs his chances for about two seconds, long enough for the night guards to fire another volley at his head. Sparks at his heels, he grabs his bag and dives into the back of the SUV. The driver slams on the gas, and they rocket out of the parking lot, skidding through four lanes of traffic and sliding into place on the interstate.

Neil pulls himself up from the floorboards. The man meets his eyes in the rearview mirror. “Hernandez,” he offers. Neil nods. “Josten.”

 

 

“So, the couch is yours for the night. I’d offer the futon in the basement, but something tells me you wouldn’t appreciate being underground or too far away from the front door,” says Hernandez. He casts a wry look over his shoulder at Neil as he pulls a fitted sheet over the couch cushions.

Neil, relegated to watching from a bar stool, stares back blankly.

Hernandez chuckles. “Son, I already know you’re a runner. Believe me, if I came downstairs to find you still here in the morning, it’d be a pleasant surprise.”

He goes back to making up the pseudo bed, arranging pillows and layering blankets to combat the chill of a desert night. Neil had told him it wasn’t necessary; he’d slept in far worse places and on far worse surfaces. Hernandez had insisted with all the hospitality of some southern housewife, disregarding anything Neil said to dissuade him. He’d disregarded anything Neil said period since arriving at his house.

Hernandez: “Have something to eat.”

Neil: “No thank you. I’m not hungry.”

Hernandez: “A sandwich it is.”

And again with spare clothes.

Hernandez: “Do you need pajamas or something?”

Neil: “I don’t do pajamas.”

Hernandez: “You’ll freeze without pajamas. You can use some of my son’s. His fault for not doing his own laundry.”

As well as seeing to his injuries.

Hernandez: “I have a healer’s kit in the closet.”

Neil: “This towel’s enough. I’m fine.”

Hernandez: “I’ll get the kit.”

So here he sits in Hernandez’s home, debris carefully picked out of his arms via tweezers and slathered with antibiotic cream, wearing borrowed flannel pants, wool socks, and a fleece sweatshirt, a plate with a half-eaten tuna sandwich in his lap, while Hernandez himself makes up a bed for Neil on the living room couch. It may be the strangest, most inexplicable situation Neil’s ever been in.

Hernandez tucks in the corners. Neil picks at the crust of the wheat bread. “Why do it then?”

“Why do what?”

“Why pretend like I’m staying if you know I’m going to run?”

Hernandez sighs. “I hope you don’t.”

Hope. Neil rips off a chunk. He rolls it into a ball between his fingers then throws it at Hernandez’s head.

“You were right,” Hernandez continues, “when you said people like me don’t do enough. We don’t.”

Neil straightens. “And you think, what? That putting a roof over my head and food in my belly and clothes on my back for a night is enough?”

He shakes his head. “No. But I think helping a sick kid who needs it is a start.”

“I’m fine.” Neil slides off the stool. “And I’m not some charity project you can use to make yourself feel better either.”

He’s closer to the back door than the front. His bag is still at the threshold, on the other side of the living room and Hernandez. Neil moves toward the back door as he crooks two fingers, pulling the bag to him with a little trick he learned in Baghdad. Imprint on an object, charm it, and you can call it to you within a relative proximity, as long as no other person has physical possession of it. Minor telekinesis, but ten times easier. No need for the requisite finesse or energy expense when you can cheat your way there.

His chest seizes with a sudden burning as the bag slams into his stomach. He doubles over, letting out a groan.

“Jesus, Josten! Sit down! It’s like I can feel that damn dark magic radiating off of you,” demands Hernandez. Neil stumbles back to the stool. Hernandez shoves the plate in front of him. “I told you to eat the sandwich.”

“Getting shot at tends to lower one’s appetite,” Neil snaps. He rubs at his chest as the pain starts to fade. “I’m not eating any more Magic Heartburn tuna.”

Hernandez slides an orange in front of him instead. “Dark magic saps your energy. You need to eat. Especially with this kind of spell.”

Neil digs his nails into the peel and starts prying it off. Hernandez does have a point. He’s newly starving. “What do you mean, _this kind of spell?”_

How could he _know?_

“It happened at the track, didn’t it? You were the one who bailed in the middle of the petty race.” Hernandez shrugs. “I’ve seen it before. Intense rivalries. A grudge. Someone not happy with the results, or who can’t accept they might lose. So one runner goes after another. Most of the time they’re draining spells. Goal is to affect or ruin someone’s performance.”

Neil frowns. “You’ve seen one strong enough to cause black blood?”

“Heard about it. A girl named Janie Smalls had just been picked up for a relay team in Carolina, then she started dripping black blood all over the place. The medics on-site thought she’d poisoned herself. Pulled her from the team for recovery. As soon as her season was officially down the drain, it all cleared up.”

Neil leans back on the stool. “I don’t think I’d warrant that sort of treatment.” At least, not for those motives.

Hernandez shakes his head. “You underestimate yourself. You’re the real deal. Any Team Master with sense would offer you a place on their relay.” He shrugs. “You have one on mine.”

Neil starts. “ _You’re_ the Millport Team Master?” There’s usually one Team Master per arena, in charge of the local athletes and relay squad, as opposed to the half dozen Conductors each big arena boasts who handle the hosting of tournaments, track maintenance, and arranging of meets. Team Masters often pluck runners for their relays from the pool of petty races participants, but they’re notoriously difficult to impress or spot in the crowd.

From what little Neil’s seen of Millport’s relay team, they’re nothing to brag about, but the fact a little town in the desert even has one, let alone an arena, is worth something. Not pride, but. Something. It’s a start.

“They don’t just let anyone stay at the track after hours,” Hernandez says with a laugh.

“I was there,” Neil points out.

His laughter dries up. “Right. Why were you there?”

What can he say that won’t expose just how vulnerable he was? That he still is, as long as this dark magic clings to him? There isn’t any safe answer, so he says nothing at all.

Hernandez nods. “The spell,” he guesses. “Incapacitation seems like a common symptom. Just hang in there. It’ll pass. And then we’ll get you on the Dingoes—if you feel like sticking around.”

It sounds so foreign, so forbidden: sticking around. Neil’s never stuck around anywhere. He doesn’t even know how. His gut churns at the thought; his cheek stings with the memory of his mother’s hand.

He can’t stick around, and he can’t wait this out. Randomly collapsing into fits of agony and unconsciousness for weeks until the spell “wears off” is not tenable—if Hernandez is even right. Doubt sits like a lump in his throat.

He feels like if he breathes wrong he’ll smell that mock orange again and drown in all his memories.

Mock orange, the component his mother had always used in her glamours.

The Goat Girl had not really been the Goat Girl. That face, that form, was just a mask. Whoever was behind it had done this to him.

“You don’t look convinced,” Hernandez remarks, breaking into Neil’s brooding.

Neil’s not sure what he’s talking about. Could be anything, really. Neil could have easily missed some other pledge of aid or belonging.

Hernandez clarifies, “You don’t think it will pass?” Oh, the supposed draining spell. “What do you think it is then?”

_Blood of years, blood of tears, blood of fears._

“Bad,” Neil says. “I think it’s bad.”

 

 

After a night on his couch, Neil understands Hernandez better now. Especially why he layered the blankets so high. Neil’s slept on sacks of flour less likely to give you a back ache.

Not that comfort matters. Mary trained him to sleep light and easy on any surface and to be out as soon as his eyes closed.

He rises well before dawn, half as rested as he’d like and twice as anxious. For the first time since the morning of the race, he unzips his duffel and rifles through the contents. A wad of clothes at the bottom, a spare pair of shoes, the binder housing the information for all of his mother’s separate accounts, for her identities and connections and debts. He rubs his hand over the inside canvas of the bag, letting his magic warm the tips of his fingers. The bag recognizes him, and the rest of its store materializes, a bulky weight he always carries but hardly sees.

His mother had put him in charge of their cache when he was twelve. He was responsible for keeping up with whatever Mary didn’t keep on her body. All the components and ingredients, the sachet pouches, the spare charms and amulets, their mortar and pestle, and once, only once, the most sacred object in their possession: Mary’s grimoire.

The Hatford grimoire, but they are a faceless family Neil doesn’t call his own, and he only knows it as belonging to his mother. She’d taken it with her when she left England, and she’d taken it again when she left Baltimore. The grimoire, and Neil.

Neil supposes it’s his grimoire now that she’s gone.

He lifts it reverently from the bag. Every real spell he knows came from here, but always by his mother’s instruction. He’s never held it like this before.

His vision suddenly swims, his head spinning dizzily. It passes a moment later, but his left hand, resting on the worn black leather of the book’s cover, goes limp and cold. Numb, like when a limb falls asleep and before the tingles set in. It’s the hand he used to connect with the duffel bag.

This damn draining spell.

Neil has to use his other hand to move his useless arm off the book. He turns to its pages with renewed purpose. When he cracks open the grimoire though, it’s totally blank. Every single yellowed piece of parchment is empty.

Neil is a new owner. Maybe the book just needs some time to get used to him before revealing its secrets. It was Mary’s—her paranoia could have rubbed off on it.

Neil glances at his numb hand. He doesn’t have time to wait for the book to trust him. He shuts the book and manually slaps his left hand on its cover. This may not even work, but he doesn’t want to lose function of both hands, including his dominant hand, in trying. Neil closes his eyes, reaching inside and then pushing his magic through him, down his arm, forcing it into his wrist and then his hand and then his finger bones like fighting through a crowd, through a bog with mud sucking him under. He clamps tight control down on the channel as a bout of coughs rack him. The leather warms beneath his palm, but when he opens it, there’s still nothing.

So the grimoire doesn’t care that he has magic. It doesn’t care or can’t tell that his magic is similar to his mother’s, to its last owner, proving they share a bloodline—

Bloodline.

Neil scrambles up and into Hernandez’s kitchen. He grabs the first knife he sees out of the wooden block by the stove and darts back to where the grimoire lies open on the floor. Standing over it, he drags the blade over the meat of his hand. Blood drips from the cut onto the parchment. It soaks into the book and vanishes.

Words appear in its place, scrawled in ink in a young, sloppy hand.

_When in doubt, bleed it out._

Neil snorts. Those words fade away, replaced by lines and lines of handwritten text, along with countless diagrams and illustrations. Neil flips through the pages. It’s all there now, each section labeled with a branch of magic. He starts skimming through, looking for anything referencing draining spells. Any mention of black blood.

He pauses when he reaches the segment on shifting. Dozens of drawings and paintings, all done with incredible detail and infinite care. Described as only someone who is a shifter can. Shifting is not a universally similar experience, but reading this, Neil feels deja vu, an impossible sense of familiarity. Like he’s reading his own words, seeing his own thoughts.

The earth sky ocean beneath his feet paws wings claws. His mind stretching and springing like elastic. Body folding growing shrinking breaking breathing. _Shifting,_ to fit the shape of his soul.

Neil realizes why magic wasn’t enough. Why it had to be blood.

This isn’t just a Hatford grimoire.

It’s a Hatford shifter grimoire. It keeps a lock on all their secrets and demands their blood as the only key.

In every way he is his mother’s legacy, he and his living blood. Certainty steadies him: if they kill him, they _won’t_ have this. They can’t steal this intimacy of who they are.

Neil digs an old roll of gauze out of the duffel. He wraps up his hand and returns to reading. There’s centuries’ worth of knowledge contained in these pages, ranging from tragic histories to glorious victories to modern potion recipes. The grimoire leaves no stone unturned. Preservation spells prevent the ink from fading, but some of the pages are illegible anyway, either from damage or just bad handwriting. Tears blot a section devoted to love enchantments. Smoke and ash blacken an entire chapter in the middle. Neil wishes he could commune with the book, make his intentions clear so it’ll find what he needs for him.

He spends hours pouring over the grimoire. The sun rises outside the living room windows, and still nothing. Nothing like what he’s looking for, anyway. One or two draining spells had popped up, mostly from medieval periods, but neither of them similar enough to what he’s experiencing. Black blood was more popular, but appeared only as a sign of dark magic at work. No specifics.

A grimoire with a wealth of information, but none of it relevant.

Even Mary’s contributions offer no help. They mainly centered on improving glamours. Spells to hide you. Neil guesses she’d made these additions in the past eight years. The only one she’d made before that period, before they went on the run, was a note in the margins of some binding spell.

_KAYLEIGH DAY_

Neil has no idea what the founder of the races had to do with anything.

“Josten?”

Neil jolts. He slams the grimoire shut and springs to his feet. Hernandez stands at the bottom of the stairs in a bathrobe, eyes wide, mouth agape.

“You’re still here?”

Neil raises an eyebrow. “I thought you wanted me to stick around.”

Hernandez yawns, shuffling toward the kitchen. “Want and expectation are two different things.”

Neil follows him. “You said you know a sage.”

“I do.” Hernandez props a hip on the counter and starts punching buttons on the Keurig. “Coffee?”

“When can I meet them?” Neil presses.

“The sage? She doesn’t take customers until ten.”

Neil checks the time. Eight thirty.

Hernandez frowns. “Are you bleeding?”

Neil groans and heads back to the living room.

 

 

The sage is not what Neil expected. Then again, neither is Hernandez. He thinks he should just stop expecting anything of people: the worst, the best, or the middle ground.

Hernandez drives them out of his suburban neighborhood into town. Neil rides in the passenger seat this time, though he keeps his head ducked low and the sun visor down. Hernandez laughs into his travel thermos, which has a cartoon dingo stamped on one side and _#1 COACH_ on the other, except _COACH_ is crossed out with _DAD_ written underneath it. Neil’s wearing his own clothes now instead of Hernandez’s son’s, but he almost misses the obvious care put into them, the love-worn seams and the scent of fabric softener and detergent. It’s easy to see Hernandez as a father in the light of morning; Neil can hardly believe he’s the same man who acted as Neil’s getaway driver.

The sage’s shop is one of many lined up in a row along Main Street. They all have the same awnings and brick facades, but the sage’s is the only one without window displays. Instead the shades are drawn. Lettering on the door is the sole indication of what the shop sells: WINFIELD WISDOMS.

They step inside. There’s no bell, and no wards that Neil can feel, but a girl emerges behind the counter anyway.

“Hello! Do you have an appointment?” she asks.

Neil peers at her face, horror trickling into his stomach.

“…knows we’re coming,” Hernandez is saying, but Neil barely hears him.

The girl nods along, then flashes a bright smile before glancing in his direction—and it’s definitely her. The girl from the check in desk at the arena.

Recognition sparks in her eyes, and she leans over the counter towards him. He takes an immediate step back, angling Hernandez between them, but she doesn’t notice, swinging her hair over her shoulder. “Nice to see _you_ again. Decide to check out town after all?”

“Still just passing through.”

Hernandez cuts a glance at him. Neil pretends not to notice.

“Taking your time at it, aren’t you?” Somehow, she pushes herself even farther over the counter. She glances at an old antique clock mounted on the wall. “I get a lunch break in an hour, if you want to grab a bite to eat? Dingo’s Diner has the best food in town.”

The Dingo, again. For every hamburger they serve, they probably sacrifice one at some jukebox altar.

“I’m afraid I’ve got him on a tight schedule today,” Hernandez interjects. He places himself bodily in her attention, stepping in front of Neil. “Do you mind seeing if Leona’s ready for us?”

Her smile droops downward. “Sure thing.” She disappears behind a gauzy black curtain.

The hands of the clock on the wall twitch to ten thirty. Neil drums his fingers uneasily on the countertop. The shop is eerie in its emptiness: only the counter, a slim charcoal couch, and several bird perches occupy the space. No herbs, no climbing ivy, no plants of any kind. Neil’s never met a witch without their stock of weeds, and he’s never met a sage who wasn’t a witch.

“Neil.”

The nape of his neck prickles. He looks up at the doorway the girl went through. A woman stands there, and at this point, having known his mother, he should be just as wary of women as men, but Neil gets the sense he need not worry about her doing him any harm he hasn’t asked for. She gestures for them to follow, and they squeeze around the counter after her. She walks with her back a straight line, but despite this something about her posture suggests an elderly stoop already. Maybe the crocheted shawl wrapped around her shoulders, rounding them down. Or maybe it’s the shiny crown of her bald head, the shape of her skull making it look bent from behind.

She leads them down the narrow hall to a room pleasantly warm and sun-baked. As soon as Neil passes through the door he’s hit with an explosion of greenery: hanging planters and pots and shelves and shelves of mason jars with little seedlings. It’s much more what he thought meeting a sage would entail.

He and Hernandez are handed both clips of fresh leaves and bundles of dried sage, then the three of them cross into the adjoining dark room. It’s cool and dry, a welcome reprieve from the humidity of the green room.

“Where do you want me, Leona?” Hernandez asks. She points to the corner, where he goes after handing her his sage.

Neil sits on a cushion on the floor while Leona arranges candles. She pops the fresh sage in her mouth and then lights the dried bundle, waving the burning end around the room. Finally she deems it wafted enough when Neil can no longer breathe without swallowing the aromatic smoke. It’s then that he notices the perch in the corner, and the gray owl sitting there shrouded in the fumes.

Neil’s skin crawls. He doesn’t like being birds, though he’s worn their skin too many times to count. He especially doesn’t like being an owl: the rotation of the head makes him sick. He can’t help but be reminded of broken necks.

“Neil.”

He realizes he never told Leona his name.

“Wait,” he blurts out. “Wait.”

She raises an eyebrow.

“How much can you see? How much will you know?”

Sages sense auras. They read magic. That’s what everyone says, but how far does it really go? How could Leona know something so factual and concrete as a name, albeit a fake one?

“Privacy is the strongest illusion magic can conjure,” she says, smiling, “but it is one I respect, nonetheless. Relax, Neil. I’ll only see what you send me looking for.”

“But how did you know my name?”

Leona actually laughs then. “It’s all over you. I couldn’t not see that if I tried. Some truths are just part of you.”

 _And some lies are too, apparently_ , he thinks.

“Let’s begin. The dark magic coming off you is going to start wilting my sage.”

Hernandez snorts in the background.

“Pass me the shirt you were wearing when it was cast.”

Neil hands her his runner’s jacket that he’d had on during the petty race. She takes a deep sniff, then balls it up and presses her forehead into it as she sinks into a trance. The candles flicker. She sits like that, swaying back and forth, for five minutes before the owl hoots. Her eyes snap open. She shakes her head.

Neil swears.

“Nothing about the caster, though I suspect you knew that. A strong glamour.” She purses her lips. “And not enough for me to be certain it is a draining spell. I’ll have to read it off of you directly.”

“You know I can’t use magic without triggering it,” Neil says.

“I know. Hernandez filled me in. You won’t have to. Give me your hands.”

Neil reluctantly extends them. Leona’s hands lack Mary’s weapon callouses, but they both have that sure grip that could send Neil back if he let it.

“Breathe,” Leona intones, “and just feel your magic. You don’t have to reach for it. Just feel it there. Let it speak.” Neil inhales. He exhales. Soothed by the scent of sage and the sage’s hands in his, a tendril unfurls within him. It takes every bit of his willpower to stay still. He inhales again. On his second exhale his eyes slip shut, and everything goes dark and quiet.

 

 

He’s been here before. The question of _when?_ rises up like a balloon, and as soon as the thought fills with helium, Neil knows the answer is both _not often_ and _a thousand times._

Here is where you meet your magic, raw and honest and in its truest form. Here is the bridge between body and soul—here is your _self_ , where they all meet, and where magic is born at the summit. Here, of course, is where bonds live, stretching from body or soul to the horizon, each a glimmering strand, imitations of the shimmering cord of magic, the strongest bond of all.

He has no trouble moving this time. He imagines himself a specter of a body, then he crosses the space, following memory. He kneels. His hands find it, and like before he instantly knows. In his hands is a faded scrap. It’s the last tatter of his bond to his mother.

 _Son, son, son,_ it mourns. _Strong, strong, strong_.

Strong could mean so many things. Their bond, Mary, her wish for Neil—in this cool, serene place, he’s certain it’s all of them.

He lets the scrap flutter away and rises. Without the disorienting haze and the oppressive cold, it’s clear here. Simple and sure. Powerful. He recognizes it suddenly, from a thousand trips and blips in and out. Every time he shifts, every form he takes, he’s here, stringing up a new bond to a new skin or plucking at old ones like a guitar. These bonds tie to that cord of magic and dangle in reverse, extending infinitely _up, up, up_.

Neil picks his way through all the threads to an open expanse of black. He hears a voice then, maybe one he’s been hearing since his arrival. Time doesn’t feel the same in this place. The urgency, the panic, the fear that drove him—it’s in some back corner of his mind now, in a pile with the other things and other worries marked _insignificant._

The voice of Leona is whispering, _“Neil. Neil, show me what it felt like. The first time, when it started.”_

But Neil is here, so he knows that to go back to that moment in the race would mean reliving it. Feeling that pain for a third time. So he shows her after instead: that, he can bear, though he feels its paralytic wrongness even more keenly now that he knows how clean and free this place _should_ be.

The haze blooms and the cold sets in. Neil feels sodden in the middle of it. He can feel Leona too, her deft fingers slowed but still trying to pick apart their surroundings. She pauses when his magic starts to speak.

 _Orange, mockery,_ he hears again, _too close, touch you, bad, bad, wounds, blood of years, blood of tears, blood of fears._

Leona falters, then dives feverishly back in to her work, no longer delicate. She shreds and rips but it makes no difference. He goes under, and the memory ends.

He’s still sitting in that open space, but Leona has withdrawn. Bright coils of magic curl about him, draping over his chest and wrapping around his shoulders like an embrace. They brush through his hair and then linger on his cheeks. One nudges against his cheekbone, below his left eye, and Neil feels sadness emanate from it.

 _Goodbye, goodbye, stay away, change, mirrors, pain,_ it promises, _home._ Neil reaches for it

 

 

and pain erupts in his side. He cries out, tearing his hands away from Leona’s grip to apply pressure. He’s not sure which old wound this is. Maybe the time he got shanked, or maybe when Billy tried to gut him after Mary spit in the man’s face. It doesn’t matter. Neil collapses on his back but keeps his hands desperately clamped over his slippery side as blood soaks through his shirt.

Hernandez shouts something at Leona, who yells at him to “Just wait!” as she sinks back onto her heels. Neil expects her to produce a poultice or to start chanting, but she merely watches him, looking on as he bleeds out.

His side throbs, spurting blood, meaning he’s probably hit an artery, or had hit an artery. He cranes his neck, trying to catch a glimpse of how bad it might be by how much blood he’s losing. His hands are coated in it as it spills over his fingers into a dark pool on the floor and—oh. He lifts his hands away, his hands with their gloves of black blood. Right. The spell.

He peels his shirt up. The blood flow starts to lessen as the pain begins to fade, until the black blood only dribbles from the gash. He watches as it zips itself closed again. He runs his wet fingers over the ridge of the scar, the pale, puckered thing he’s carried for years. No sign it had just reopened and starting gushing like a volcano.

“I told you not to reach,” Leona says.

Neil glares at her.

She nods at the oil slick on the hardwood. “That will happen every time you do.”

He sits up. “So you got a read on it.”

“I did.” Leona’s brows knit together, a troubled expression that paired with her sigh bodes ill. “I am sorry, Neil.”

He has no use for meaningless apologies, hollow comfort. She didn’t do this to him. “What is it?” he prods.

Leona glances back at Hernandez. “It’s more than a draining spell. It’s a curse.”

Hernandez sucks in a breath, but Neil only nods. He’d suspected it was something more from the beginning, after all. A curse makes sense.

“It will feed on your magic, first,” Leona continues. “Anytime you use it, and then even when you aren’t, until you have none left. When you experience the pain of years past, that is the magic being drawn from you.”

 _Blood of years_.

“Once your magic has been stolen, the curse will start draining your life force as well.”

Is this what his magic meant when it told him _goodbye, goodbye?_

He clenches his fists. Steal his magic. Steal his _life._ He didn’t survive so long for this. “How do I stop it?”

Leona shakes her head. “I don’t know.”

Neil gawks. “What do you mean, _you don’t know?”_

“I read magic,” Leona explains, “I can’t solve it. I’m not a cursebreaker.”

“Fine.” He climbs unsteadily to his feet. Hernandez rushes to support him. “Who is?”

“You’ll need someone familiar with the darkest of magic. A run of the mill cursebreaker in a town like this will only accelerate the curse trying to break it,” advises Leona. “I have a cousin in South Carolina. Abigail. She knows cursebreakers there who–who might be the only ones strong enough to help you.”

Neil grabs his duffel and slings it over his shoulder. “Where in South Carolina?”

 

 

Mary taught Neil plenty of things about people—mainly not to trust them—including not to expect anyone to do anything for nothing. Always have something to barter. Even better if they want what you have more than you want what they have. And if not, you better act like it.

Neil can only imagine how much a high profile cursebreaker is going to cost.

Hernandez purchases his plane ticket and even drives him to the airport, waving him off when Neil badgers him about how much he’ll need to pay back. Neil’s inwardly relieved, even if, sitting in Hernandez’s SUV in the parking lot, he can’t physically force himself to say thank you. He’s running low on funds as it is; he got nothing from that last mess of a race, and his winnings were supposed to supplement his travel money.

Mary left cash caches all over the world, but most of them were precautionary, meant to stay untouched. She sold a few spells every few months through her contacts to support them. Neil knows how to get in touch with those old contacts, but they’d probably trust him enough to do business just as much as he’d trust them. Not that he’s capable of selling any spells now anyway, on magic-lockdown as he is. He can’t remotely summon that cash either.

Maybe they’ll accept a kidney. A lung. If they don’t break this curse he won’t need organs anyway.

“You have the address?” Hernandez asks, walking with Neil to his gate.

Neil taps his temple. “All up here,” he drawls.

Hernandez slants him a look that Neil figures Hernandez’s son is well-acquainted with.

“It’s in my pocket,” Neil relents, patting his jeans. Hernandez nods, satisfied, and they continue walking in a silence that slowly fills with awkward tension the closer they get to the gate.

When they’re finally there, Hernandez watches Neil scope out the rows of sparsely-populated seats, his mouth periodically opening and closing. Neil dreads whatever potentially emotional goodbye Hernandez is struggling to get out. Hernandez can’t be _that_ attached to him, but his son is away at college, so maybe he’s projecting his fatherly sentiment onto Neil instead.

 _Fatherly_. Neil shoves his duffel onto a plastic bench, trying to force the word away from him in the same gesture.

Hernandez clears his throat and extends his hand.

Neil almost doesn’t take it, the hand of this stranger. _Trust no one._ But he doesn’t have to trust Hernandez to shake his hand, or, apparently, to jump in his car or sleep in his house. Neil accepts the handshake and doesn’t roll his eyes when Hernandez says, “Be safe, Neil.”

“Don’t pick up any more strays at the track,” Neil says.

Hernandez laughs. “I don’t think any of them could be as much trouble as you.” He looks at Neil, something firm and solid in his eyes. Something appraising and promising. “Come on back after you break this curse. You have a spot on my team.”

Back to Millport. Back to the Dingo Arena. Being on the relay team would mean being a permanent fixture. Would mean staying. Would mean a future. A future he _can_ have now, but—

A lump rises in his throat. _Staying._ He doesn’t remember how to stay anywhere, doesn’t even know where to begin. Even as a child in Baltimore he knew if he messed up too bad there was nothing keeping him from leaving this plane of existence altogether.

No. Fix this curse first, then—

Then worry about the next step.

Neil steels himself and offers Hernandez a wry grin. “If I ever need a team of getaway drivers, I’ll know who to call first.”

He shakes his head. “Try not to get into any more situations that require one, alright?”

The crackly intercom announces Neil’s flight is now boarding. He slings his bag back over his shoulder, fishing his ticket out of the pocket of his hoodie. He heads for the bridge, but he can’t resist calling over his shoulder, “You know me. Since when do I ever get into trouble?”

He hears Hernandez’s guffaws of laughter behind him, but he doesn’t turn around to see. He boards the plane like he’s boarded dozens of other planes, and he sets his sights on his cure.

Hernandez did give him an idea on how to pay for it. He could just . . . run another race.

The races and their grand arenas and pristine tracks originally started out as a couple of college students in a cramped yard letting off steam. Tired of the strict sanctions and rigid regulations imposed on magic in every official sport or measly competition, they decided to let loose in a vicious free for all. Nothing barred. And they liked it. The freedom, not having to hold back or bury what you can do. Their friends liked it too. Lots of people did, really. They got the inkling there might be a whole audience out there that would greatly enjoy what they were doing.

They were Kayleigh Day and Tetsuji Moriyama.

The two of them, backed by their closest supporters, built the first ramshackle, portable arena and hosted the first set of Games. There weren’t near as many contests at that first showing: just a race, an obstacle course, and several sparring matches that evolved into bloody gladiator fights. The public loved it. And so it grew.

It was a release; it was a test of talent, a feat of skill. You could use as much or as little magic as you wanted, and you could use any kind without penalty. Cops could still arrest you if they caught you practicing an illegal variety, but the risk only increased the reward. Often it was the clever who accepted the laurels, not the brutes or the powerhouses. Those who could rise to the challenge of adaptation, who could balance their actions and reactions—they were the best.

The arenas spread across the world, a wildfire fanned by the flames of magical repression. The Games lost some of their wild in the globalization, but made up for it in new diversity of events.

Neil remembers visiting the arena in Baltimore when he was small. Just once or twice, to see the gladiator fights. They’re bloody now, and they were even bloodier then. Na– _The Butcher_ and his people liked it that way. Neil shakes off the memory, but he can’t relax the tension in his shoulders.

He leans back into the seat. If he can nap, great. He needs as much rest as he can get. When he lands, he’ll have to race—without magic. And this time, he can’t lose, fake or otherwise. In order to break this curse, Neil has to win.

 

-

 

Andrew does not like the races. He doesn’t like the Games as a whole or even the arena itself either, but he _strongly dislikes_ the races the most. Bee encourages him to not hate them, but he’s on the razor’s edge he’s so close.

Why does he almost-hate them? Other than the stupidity of hyping up a foot race, Kevin equates their importance to blood and breath. It makes Andrew’s job ten times harder and pisses him off to boot that Kevin keeps trying to go right back to what nearly killed him in the first place. If he cared more, he’d hate Kevin for it. As it is, he cares little, though any care is technically a lot compared to his standard apathy.

He’s here anyway, to hold Kevin’s leash and to pretend he doesn’t see his brother slink off and to keep his cousin unhurt and out of some ditch. Physically unhurt. Andrew can do nothing about Nicky’s fragile feelings.

He’s at the top of the stands, Kevin sniffing around near the rail at the bottom, when Wymack joins him with cracking joints. It’s a long climb with a shitty view, and usually Andrew is its only tourist, but the arena’s busy tonight as Lughnasadh approaches. Andrew had retreated quickly to higher ground, but the altitude had failed to deter a thin crowd from forming this time. So he sits, stiff-backed, determinedly avoiding glancing down between his feet. He’s far too on edge to be provoking fear tonight.

Wymack passes him a pack of cigarettes wordlessly. He waits for Andrew to smoke through half of it before he ever speaks. “There’s a kid coming. To the shop. I may need you to take a look at him.”

Andrew hums. “What did I tell you about taking in strays?”

“I took in your lot,” Wymack retorts. “This kid is a client. Abby’s cousin in Arizona referred him.”

A referral. Those only come for one of two reasons. “So is he cursed or was he a curse on society?”

“Could be both,” Wymack muses. “From the sound of it, he’ll fit right in. I’ll see you there at eight?”

Andrew slides another cigarette out of the package. He holds it out to Wymack, who twists his arm. The dark, twisting tattoos on his forearms roil across his skin and spark flames in his palms. Andrew lights up, and Wymack closes his fist, extinguishing the fire as his tattoos settle back into dormancy.

“Fire whiskey,” Andrew says.

Wymack confirms, “Done.”

Andrew’s mouth curves wide. “Then you’ll see me at eight. Should I dress my best? Or should I wear those shackles so he knows who he’s really deal—”

“I swear, if you wear those shackles anywhere I’ll toss your whole family out on their asses!” Wymack threatens. He sighs. “Dammit, look what you’ve done to my blood pressure.”

Andrew takes a long drag, relishing the burn of the smoke in his throat. “You made the climb, old man.”

“Speaking of.” Wymack stands up, peering intently over the sea of heads at the stands below. “You better make it yourself. Looks like Kevin’s about to fly away.”

Andrew shoots to his feet and darts down the bleachers, leaping onto the center handrail and sliding down it when there’s no room to pick his way down on his own. When he reaches the bottom, he bulldozes his way through the loitering bodies to where he last saw Kevin bent in half over the rail. He shoves aside a girl clothed only in vines and a hipster puffing green vapor before he nearly rips his cousin’s arm out of its socket when Nicky makes the mistake of trying to grab him.

“Andrew! It’s me!” Nicky shrieks. Andrew’s already recognized and released him, but Nicky still stares with big pleading doe eyes. “It’s Nicky.”

Andrew scans him up and down, determines Nicky’s in just as good as shape as when they arrived, and then turns to continue on toward Kevin. Nicky halts him again, calling his name instead of trying to bodily stop him this time.

“Andrew! Aaron’s got Kevin, over here!” Nicky waves him in the opposite direction, over to the stairs. Andrew follows on his heels. They descend to the dirt below. It’s still busy on the ground, people bustling here and there, but with everyone moving it feels less suffocating, though easier to be swept away in the current.

Aaron crouches next to a shivering Kevin on a patch of sod, near a collapsible stall where a nymph sells homemade chia pets. Terracotta shards litter the ground around Kevin’s bare feet, his toes curling in to his soles with an unnatural arch. Aaron’s muttering as he digs his hands into the earth and starts piling clumps of soil around Kevin’s ankles.

“You’re _planting_ him?” Nicky asks, a hysterical edge to his voice.

Aaron snaps, “I’m grounding him. Go get me more chia seeds.” Nicky scampers off, and Aaron turns to Andrew. “Well? Snap him out of it!”

Andrew does a quick assessment of his brother first. “Where’s your jacket?”

Aaron keeps digging, making little mountains up Kevin’s legs. “It’s too hot.”

Andrew narrows his eyes. “ _Where_ is it?” Around a certain arboreal’s shoulders, no doubt. Instead of answering, Aaron shouts, “Nicky! Hurry up! And give us your jacket!”

Nicky runs back over, arms full of packets of chia seeds, which Aaron unceremoniously tears open and dumps on his dirt mounds. He takes a moment to work up a mouthful of saliva, then spits on each one. _“Grow.”_

Andrew’s seen his brother’s nature magic before, so he doesn’t bother to watch the tiny green shoots burst up from the dirt, twining together like rope fibers to wind tight around Kevin’s calves and loop around his knees, working deep into the earth to anchor him to the ground. Andrew focuses on the larger problem: Kevin a twitchy mess, his muscles spasming, his pupils blown so wide only the thinnest ring of green remains. Nicky shrugs off his denim jacket and passes it to Andrew. He slings it around Kevin, forcing his arms down and keeping them to his sides lest they become wings. Nicky takes charge of maintaining this fix while Andrew seizes Kevin’s chin.

“Look at me.” Kevin’s beady eyes dart wildly. “Look. At. Me.”

They lock onto Andrew, the band of green swelling, pushing back the black.

“You’re not going anywhere. You’re not _flying_ anywhere. You’re _not_ flying back there.”

Andrew doesn’t know why he’s the only one who can get through to Kevin when he’s this far gone. Abby can usually calm him down before it progresses far enough for Kevin to sprout feathers, but once he reaches that point, it takes Andrew to make a man back out of him. It’s not his stern voice—Wymack is better on that front—and he’s not compassionate like Abby. He isn’t soft or encouraging or nice. He’s just Andrew, _doing his job,_ with all the purpose that comes with that. No room for anything else. But maybe that’s the reason. Kevin can’t stand—or fly—on his own. So he ends up here, stuck almost there, caught between instincts and fear, until someone tells him which way to go.

Slowly the black recedes as Andrew talks, pupils returning to regular human size and losing their beetle-shell shine. Kevin stops shaking. Nicky’s jacket slides off, and Kevin’s broad shoulders uncurl, this one action somehow making him look more human than anything else. He flexes his hands. His scowl settles into place at the perpetual tremor in his left. Andrew rolls his eyes, but it’s enough normalcy that he feels comfortable sitting back.

Aaron, noticing this, goes ahead with the verbal portion of the follow up. Each time it sounds more like Bee and less like a beratement, which Andrew isn’t sure how he feels about. Aaron asks, “What spooked you?”

“I saw a crow,” Kevin croaks.

Aaron glances at Andrew. “Not a raven?”

Kevin shakes his head. Aaron continues to give Andrew a look. Andrew shrugs. As long as it’s not a raven, he doesn’t care. It’s not his problem, but his brother obviously expects something different. Eventually Aaron throws up his hands.

Nicky pipes up, “So . . . are we going back to the track or . . . ?”

Kevin nods emphatically while Aaron leans over and dusts his grimy hands off over Nicky’s artfully tousled curls. Nicky yelps and swats at him. They wrestle for five minutes by Andrew’s count, all the while ignoring Kevin repeatedly asking Aaron to free his feet from their chia prison.

By the time they’re all on their feet and they’ve left the chia behind, Wymack’s finally found them. He takes in their slightly soiled state with obvious relief. He and Kevin start blathering about the tournament next weekend. Nicky and Aaron peel off toward one of the food trucks. Andrew wanders after Kevin and Wymack, close enough he won’t lose them but far enough they can’t drag him into conversation.

They end up trackside, on the other side of the barrier from the runners. Andrew checks the time on his phone. According to the schedule Kevin shoved in his face on the drive over, it’s time for the petty races.

The gun goes off, the race starts, and Andrew’s attention slips off. He’s not really paying attention to anything, but he’s still hyper aware of any movement and catches the exact moment when Wymack tenses.

The petty races are a race, yes, but they can also be a brawl. Andrew’s seen a dozen by now, and at least half of those were won by sabotage. He’s not surprised to see it here.

The boy in the lead—leading by almost half the length of the track—ducks the first fireball flung his way. He’s not glowing, or shifted, or half-transfigured. He doesn’t look like he’s using any magic at all. He’s just running. Andrew supposes if you’re already that fast you don’t need any help. That, or the boy doesn’t _have_ any magic.

Lithe and nimble, he doesn’t slow, twisting to avoid projectiles, weaving around craters that suddenly bloom in front of him. He’s nearly to the finish line, after diving through a curtain of blue flame and scaling an earthen wall, when a girl who’s been ice skating her way down the track and sending the rest of her competitors slipping and sliding tries to turn him into an icicle. He manages to avoid being impaled. Instead of doing something simple like giving her a verbal fuck you, though, he climbs the giant spire of ice and starts hopping from one to another, using the new minefield of icy stalagmites like toadstools. The girl screams. In her rage she’s blind to the penguin that comes down sledding on its belly. It hits her in the legs, sending her sprawling, and then materializes into another girl at the edge of the icicle field. Andrew spots the glint of metal before she whips her arm back and hurls a knife at the boy.

Andrew’s eyes are sharp enough to make out the yellow glow of the blade. A charm, to be _unerring._

The boy shifts; possibly he heard the first girl’s cry. It gives him a second to throw up his hand before the knife slams into his chest.

But the air ripples with magic and Andrew feels the surge over his own skin as the blade shatters in the air.

For a moment, the boy glows from some inner light, his aura suffused with magic, exultant and triumphant. And then he wavers on his perch—the presence of dark magic seeps like cold into Andrew’s bones—and tumbles down to the ground.

The crowd gasps, not out of fear or shock but glee at the turn towards dramaticism. The boy, crumpled on the track, drags himself the scant distance to the finish line. The penguin girl appears as he scrabbles in the dirt. He doesn’t hesitate to blast her back on her ass into the earth wall. He collapses over the line to the cheers of the crowd, body still shaking. He vomits into the dirt, then goes totally limp.

The rest of the runners still able to walk or crawl finally pile over the line one by one. The penguin girl steps on his fingers as she half-stomps half-waddles past.

The boy doesn’t move.

The crowd doesn’t worry. Runners on the brink of death, runners dying—nothing new. A team of healers rush out to the track with a stretcher. Andrew turns to Wymack. His tattoos slither restlessly over his skin, made uneasy by that dark magic they both felt. Andrew meets his gaze.

“There’s your referral,” Andrew says. “I wouldn’t wait till eight.”

 

 

Wymack leads the way to the infirmary, Andrew following, and Kevin following Andrew. Kevin’s strangely giddy: something weird on its own and even weirder after he nearly shifted half an hour ago.

Andrew can still feel the heaviness in his bones. The cold. His very veins turned sluggish.

If he could just burn it out. Burn out the darkness. He hasn’t been able to do that in a long time. He touches his arm, just barely able to trace the edge of his knife through the layers of his sleeves, and wills that to be enough for now.

Wymack pushes open the infirmary door. Andrew takes stock. There’s half a dozen beds, all cordoned off with curtains, and three more exam tables set up at the back for those with minor injuries that can be treated quickly. Three of the beds have drawn curtains and vague silhouettes on the other sides. The fourth has drawn curtains and a puddle of tar oozing out beneath their hem.

Kevin makes a beeline for it. Andrew grabs him by the shirt collar and forcibly adjusts his course. Kevin starts to protest but Andrew cuts him off.

“You got spooked by a crow tonight,” he says. “Wait by the door until we’re done with him.”

Kevin grits his teeth. Andrew doesn’t wait for a retort that will never come. He joins Wymack where he stands outside the curtains, perusing a chart that contains minimal information at best. While Wymack wastes time on useless stats—obsessed with everyone’s blood pressure these days—Andrew crouches, surveying the tar slick. He can see its path from where it originally splattered on the floor to the rivulets it runs in past his shoes, the slope of the floor carrying it to the drain in the center. It’s not actually tar, not viscous enough.

It’s black blood.

Andrew’s favorite.

Grimacing, he dips two fingers in the closest stream. Immediately cold rushes over him. Darkness chases his vision until it claims his sight. He’s plunging through the ice on a winter lake and he’s bracing himself, letting his mind sink, while his body throws on armor and builds up walls against the flood of water, coming to extinguish the spark in his chest. Distantly he knows he is still kneeling on the floor in the infirmary—distantly, he knows this. But right up close he knows if he lets this curse snuff him out Wymack will have two dead boys instead of one.

He’s got mental walls to match the ones erected against the flood. This kind of psychological shielding is his only defense left, and he’s spent the past six years perfecting it. He’s still cautious as he tests the current. It runs black as pitch and reeks of gasoline, visible fumes trying to sneak into his airways. They dissolve as soon as they touch the walls.

Andrew pushes his mind forward, cutting through the current as it hisses and writhes around his shields. He doesn’t need the tributary and he doesn’t need the lake. He needs the wellspring that feeds them.

He needs the exact point where the curse has the runner in a chokehold, so he can break its grip.

And then the current surges, and knocks him off his feet, and sweeps him away. His shields hold but the whispers still slither in, because words don’t need chinks in armor or soft spots to hit. The curse, rustling, promises him, _blood of years, blood of tears, blood of fears_.

Andrew focuses first on the body behind the walls. He drags his mind back to it, this representation of his being, laid siege to by ice, and then he reaches for that spark. It’s small and dim and no great flame, but it’s why he’s alive, and as his hand closes about it, he opens his eyes.

Wymack peers down at him. Andrew removes his fingers from the blood and gives him a salute, a quick flick of his gray-stained fingers from his temple. Wymack rolls his eyes but steps through the gap in the curtains. Andrew follows.

“Oh!” The nurse drops her washcloth on the kid’s forehead. “David!”

“Sarah.”

“Abby isn’t here today,” says Sarah, biting her lip to hide a smile. She halfway turns to her patient in dismissal. “I’ll let her know you stopped by when I see her tomorrow.”

Andrew wonders if Nurse Sarah is the gambling type. The others would love another addition to the pot on the “when are Wymack and Abby making it official” bet.

“Yeah, I know.” Wymack does know; Abby’s in charge of the shop right now while he’s away. Sarah, on the other hand, doesn’t know that, and merely raises her brows. Wymack coughs. “I’m here for him.”

They all look to the him lying in the bed. The washcloth still covers half his face.

“You know this man?” Sarah asks hopefully. “Right now we have him listed as a John Doe. I sent Mina over to Registration with his markers, but she hasn’t come back yet.”

“I’ve been expecting him,” Wymack replies. “We can take him from here.”

Sarah balks. “In the state he’s in?”

“He’ll die in your hands,” says Andrew. He wiggles his gray fingers. “Which of us knows how to deal with this?”

He might still die in their hands. If he does, it will be for very different reasons than incompetency.

Sarah starts to protest, but then snaps her mouth shut. Her mouth pinches in a defeated line. She glances at the dark stains on her abandoned washcloth, the black blood she’s no doubt scrubbed from the runner’s face. She straightens her shoulders. When Wymack requests some privacy, she leaves, drawing the curtains back. Andrew listens to her footsteps. Light, now that they’ve taken this burden from her shoulders.

Even if Andrew’s reputation didn’t precede him, she probably would have handed him over anyway. Who cares to sit and watch a boy die a slow, gruesome death?

As soon as he is sure Sarah is gone, after checking on her other patients and assuring them she’ll be right back, she just has to fetch Mina, Andrew snatches the washcloth off the runner’s face and whips him in the chest with it.

“I know you’re awake. And if you have any brains at all you’ll stop trying to use that summoning charm.”

It wasn’t hard to figure out. That surge in the current was this idiot attempting magic.

Said idiot’s eyes snap open. He sits up with a wince. Andrew watches his eyes dart all over the room. They sweep over Wymack; his shoulders tense, but he moves on. Like any good runaway, he catalogues exit points, makes a list of every item in the room he can use to his advantage—and if he’s a good runaway, that’s all of them. He turns to Andrew last. It’s both a compliment and an insult, the shared meaning clear: _you are the biggest threat here_.

It’s also true. Andrew bares his teeth in a near enough smile. For a moment, it’s just the two of them, assessing each other.

He blinks first. There’s still blood smeared over his cheek from when he landed in his own vomit, crusted under his nose and blotching his t-shirt.

Wymack clears his throat.

“I want my money,” he spits out before Wymack can say anything. “I won. I want my prize money.”

“We’re not here for that,” Wymack says.

His hand curls in the sheets. “Then get out.”

“We’re here to help you,” Wymack continues. “Just tell us your name. If you aren’t who we’re looking for, we’ll help you anyway. You’ve got a serious problem there, and neither of us have time to waste.”

Andrew tilts his head, mildly interested as he watches the runner’s hand inch closer and closer to his leg while Wymack talks.

“I don’t need your help.” His fingers dip inside a pocket on the side of his thigh. _“Get out.”_

Wymack takes a step, reaching inside his own pocket, and the runner lashes out with a switchblade. Andrew raises his eyebrows. He’d expected charms, powders, maybe a talisman. A vial of Greek fire, if Andrew was lucky. Instead he’s pulled a blade, a completely ordinary little switchblade, and Andrew can’t decide whether that makes him less or more stupid for not using magic.

Wymack doesn’t give ground, but he does give a pulse of heat that Andrew feels wash over him across the room. His tattoos lap at his wrists, eager to feed flames into his palms. He produces a small rectangular card and impales it on the tip of the runner’s blade.

Andrew floats closer. It could be one of the shop’s standard business cards, or it could be the kind Wymack had given to only a handful of people, including Andrew.

The card is blank, singed around the edges from Wymack’s hungry fire. It’ll stay blank until they get to the shop, and then the sigil will appear: the key to unlock the wards surrounding the shop’s annex, the back room of the back room, where the worst work is done.

It’s an exclusive little club that has access to the annex. Wymack himself, Abby, Renee, Kevin, Aaron, though he spurns it, Andrew, and now—

“What is this?” demands the runner, plucking the card off his switchblade. “What do you want?”

Wymack considers him carefully before he answers, which Andrew finds ridiculous since Wymack already handed over the literal keys to the kingdom. Finally Wymack says, “To give you a chance, Neil. You’ve come a long way to get that.”

The switchblade wavers in the air. Fear flashes like light in his brown eyes. _Neil_. No room left for doubt, then, that this is their guy. Not that there was much to begin with. The chances of two cursed guys coming to town at the same time are lower than the chance Neil actually survives this.

“Leona Winfield gave me your name,” Wymack says. Neil lowers the blade completely and stows it back in his pants. Other than that, he doesn’t budge from the bed. Wymack waits, even pushes open the curtains, but Neil still refuses to move. Wymack folds his arms. “Look, we aren’t the ones dying here. That’s you. Waste all the time you want, but know that every minute you sit here puts you another minute closer to being that puddle on the floor.”

Neil glances at the puddle. “How did you find me?”

“We were watching the race,” Wymack replies, and Neil accepts it, even if it really isn’t an answer to his question. “Are you coming or not? We can’t work here.”

Neil says, “Another minute.”

Wymack opens his mouth for another spiel, but Andrew cuts him off. Persuasion isn’t the problem. “He can’t walk. His legs are numb.”

Neil shoots him a glare. “He’s wrong. I’m fine. I just need a minute.”

“For your legs to come back,” Andrew retorts. He knows he’s right. He’s been watching Neil this whole time, and he hasn’t moved his lower body once, even when he slashed at Wymack. It explains why Neil was faking being unconscious, why he is still here, why he didn’t run a long time ago.

“I’m fine.”

“Stand up, then,” Andrew challenges. He adds, grinning, “ _If_ you can.”

Neil grits his teeth. Andrew folds his arms, smirking as Neil loses patience with his poorly responding muscles and manually moves first his left leg and then his right leg off the bed. He sits on the edge of the mattress for a moment, his legs limp, splayed out like noodles. His face scrunches up, frustration and exertion in turn wrestling across his features. He manages to flop his foot about, trying to get it flat on the floor. The other doesn’t cooperate as well; Neil’s face contorts sharply, then just as abruptly smoothes out.

On Neil the blankness looks like giving up. Andrew’s almost disappointed, even though failure was exactly what he expected. It’s an irritating contradiction and that blank look on Neil’s face just pisses him off more—except it’s not blank. It’s not empty. His face is full of something—something dangerous, because Andrew isn’t sure what he’s seeing, isn’t sure what to call it.

Neil pushes himself off the edge of the bed, and as his balance teeters he stands by strength of will alone, long enough to raise his head and look Andrew in the eyes. Then he takes a step and his knees buckle, sending him toppling onto the floor.

Wymack bursts into action, scooping Neil up and depositing him in a wheelchair, each action punctuated by a bearish grunt from Wymack and a birdlike squawk from Neil. Wymack wheels him into the aisle and hands him off to Kevin, who’d been lurking right outside, peeking through the curtains. Wymack turns to Andrew then, and he realizes only when he has to move that he’d reached for his knives when Neil fell.

 

 

Andrew’s sitting on the counter when Renee floats in. Legs pulled to his chest, ankles loosely crossed, he sits with his chin propped on his knee and over a dozen candles flickering around him. His head is both clear and foggy, as he hasn’t entirely shook himself out of the trance he fell into to meditate. Renee looks even more ethereal than usual as she glides toward him, her hair a shimmery iridescent cloud about her face and her skirts billowing around her legs with her steps, light and graceful as a dancer.

Andrew wonders where she’s come from, airy and glowing like that. A childish part of him wants to ask, to beg to go there too, to a place she can leave with a little of its grace in her bearing and a little less of her demons. The longing runs rampant within him for a terrifying moment. He tamps it down. He’d rather have his demons accounted for.

Renee smiles her beatific smile at him. “Hello, Andrew.” She surveys the length of the counter, glances behind it at the detritus and displays he’d shoved to the floor to make space. She draws a ring with her finger around one of the smaller votive candles. “Can I sit?”

Her dress is sleeveless, exposing her arms and shoulders and the bloodstone cradled in the hollow of her throat. This sign of her own unsurety is the only reason he can bear to let her see him in his unsteadiness. He draws several of the candles closer to him and nods.

Renee climbs onto the counter, tucking her skirts tight under her legs and shifting the candles around to avoid any accidental contact with the flames. She could easily heal a burn, but mending a ruined dress, and one of Reynolds’s gifts at that, would be a more difficult feat. He may or may not know this because it may or may not have happened before.

Once seated, Renee takes a deep breath. “Rosemary?”

Andrew inclines his head toward the set of rooms at the back of the shop. Renee hums thoughtfully but doesn’t press.

Instead, she prays. Andrew listens, cupping his hands around one of the larger candles, gazing into the flame as wax melts over his fingers and drips on his jeans. He doesn’t share her piety; her murmured words mean nothing to him. Her gentle cadence, though, rising and falling with the ritual words, overlapped with the flickering light between his palms, almost gives the fire a voice. Almost restores something lost. It’s both devastating and soothing and above all centering.

By the time Abby emerges from the back room, Andrew’s blown out all the candles and Renee has ceased worship. They’re in the middle of a contest of who can build the most elaborate house out of the leftover matchsticks.

Abby peers at the pair of growing structures, then taps the counter in front of the one Renee’s constructing. “This one looks more sturdy,” she says.

Andrew, who has in fact been struggling with his tower’s needlepoint balance, grunts.

Eyes still on their matchstick frames, Abby informs them, “I’ve just administered the restorative draught. He should wake soon.”

“A restorative draught,” Renee repeats, pleased. “I smelled the rosemary.”

Abby beams her approval. “Yes, we had to go overboard on the rosemary once it was obvious the sedative wasn’t going to wear off.”

Renee raises her eyebrow. “Sedative?”

“He got jumpy in the car,” Andrew interjects. “And he kept trying to use magic.”

Abby frowns. “Was the horse tranquilizer really necessary though?”

“We needed to detain him.” Andrew shrugs. “And we did.”

He’d barely gone down with the tranquilizer. Andrew had been tempted to shove his unconscious body out of the car afterward. Who builds up immunity to _horse tranquilizer?_

Evidently the same person who gets cursed and decides a petty race will solve his problems.

Abby sighs. “Come on, you two. I have the notes from Leona for you to look at.”

“Your cousin Leona?” Renee inquires, hopping off the counter.

Abby nods. She shares a brief, fond smile with Renee, the kind earned by remembering a detail others would forget.

Andrew slides down. He leans close to Renee, almost bumping her shoulder. “He’s a _referral_ ,” Andrew fake-whispers.

“He’s cursed,” Abby says. “That’s what matters.”

“Referrals are always the worst ones,” Renee muses. She rubs her thumb over her bloodstone. “You’ve met him already, Andrew. Have you peeked at the curse yet?”

He thinks of the black blood on the floor and plunging his mind into an icy lake. The path he’d started down toward the wellspring, the nexus. “From a distance.”

“Are you going to take him?”

Andrew tells her, “Wymack gave him a key to the annex.”

She takes the information in, then says again, voice heavy with significance, “Are you going to take him?”

He doesn’t know yet. His instincts are a tangled mess he’ll need cigarettes and quiet and solitude to unravel. He says, “There’s no point. He’ll get himself killed as soon as he’s cured anyway.”

Renee smiles. Andrew has the strange feeling he gave her the answer she wanted anyway.

Abby leads the way to the back room, plucking sprigs from the hanging planters they pass along the way. She tucks them carefully into the pockets of her apron and waves Andrew and Renee inside ahead of her. The wards barely ripple. Andrew grits his teeth. With everyone coming and going, the wards on the back room receive little maintenance, and this deliberate weakening of them to allow Neil passage renders them pointless. He’s the only one who cares about wards, it seems, and the only one who can’t do anything to fix them.

Wymack looks up with relief from his station monitoring a stirring Neil. He abdicates to Abby, joining Renee and Andrew where they overlook the scene from afar. He hands Renee a manila file folder, the name _Neil Josten_ printed on the tab in Kevin’s neat handwriting.

“Organizing files apparently relaxes him,” Wymack says. He jerks a thumb over his shoulder. “He’s in the annex with a box of them now.”

After his scare with the crow, any task giving Kevin a modicum of control probably relaxes him.

Andrew lets Renee review the file, then halfheartedly listens as she fills him in. Drains his magic, drains his life force, he’s got it. He’s not surprised; if anything, it reinforces what Andrew already surmised: Neil is a danger, made more dangerous by being an idiot.

On the table, Neil drowsily opens his eyes. He lifts his head, his bleary gaze meeting Andrew’s. Instantly he jolts upright, scrambling for the edge of the table. He snatches up the closest object and hurls the mason jar at Andrew’s head.

Wymack lunges in between them, heat flaring from his outstretched arms. The jar splatters on the floor at Wymack’s feet in a mess of melted glass.

“Did you shoot me?” Neil demands, still looking past Wymack at Andrew.

Andrew tilts his head. “You tell me, you’re the one who’s been shot before.”

“It was Dan’s dart gun,” Wymack mutters to Abby.

Neil reaches for another jar. Wymack pries it from his fingers before he can launch it at Andrew.

Andrew adjusts the edges of his bands. “Neil,” he says calmly, “if you’re going to throw something at me, at least make it that knife in your pants.”

Renee coughs. Abby hides her face in her hands. Wymack looks thoroughly unimpressed and disillusioned with his chosen calling.

Neil says, “Do you give as good as you get?”

Andrew raises his eyebrows. “Do you want to find out?”

Neil starts to slide off the table. Wymack leaps once more into the fray with a stern interjection of “Later, off the premises” while Abby starts assembling components for a sachet. Wymack manages to convince Neil to stay within the confines of his table island, leaving the rest of the room open sea for Andrew to prowl. And prowl he does. Wymack’s employees are collectively a lazy, messy lot; the back room is the hub for most of their illicit activity, where they go when they desert their post at the front counter. Andrew checks the milk bottle Nicky was stashing poppy seeds in. Empty. Good. He took Andrew’s threat to burn them seriously then. He searches the rest of the shelves anyway, just in case his cousin decided to move them instead of dispose of them. No poppy seeds, but the girls must have been dipping into the wormwood store again. He chunks the empty container into the trash. The debris pile in the corner looms large, the straw head of one of the training dummies stacked on top like the crown jewel of a junk heap. That puts Boyd at thirty-seven, nine in the last month.

Eventually Andrew wanders back over to the others. Abby’s tying up the sachet as Wymack lays out Neil’s options.

“Renee and Andrew are our two cursebreakers. I can handle it in a pinch, but I’m definitely not the man you want for what you’ve got,” says Wymack. “They’re both skilled at what they do, and Renee’s in training as a healer. I’ll give you a choice on who you feel comfortable with working on you. Cursebreaking can be . . . invasive.”

Neil flinches.

“You’ll be in the best of hands,” Abby assures him. She ties the cords of the sachet pouch in a knot, placing the brightly embroidered little bag in Neil’s hands. The runes are delicate stitchwork yet lack Reynolds’s dramatic flair. A custom bag of Abby’s then. “My cousin was right to send you to us.”

 _Referrals are always the worst ones,_ Renee had said. And she was right.

Neil tucks the sachet into his pocket. His hands now empty, he fixes Renee with a long look. She smiles back, peaceful and serene and angelic, looking nothing like a woman who’s stained her hands with more black blood than Neil could vomit for the duration of the curse. Andrew’s pulse jackrabbits. He folds his arms as an excuse to press his thumb into the inside of his elbow.

 _Don’t pick me_ , he should say. He should walk out right now. Spit in Wymack’s offer and default him to Renee. Because this isn’t temporary—this isn’t just breaking Neil’s curse. Wymack gave him a key to the annex. Neil is here to stay, if he resists running. So whoever takes him now, adds another person to their circle. Andrew doesn’t need another person. Kevin’s issues are enough for two as it is.

Neil turns away from Renee, his hands clenching the edge of the table. His eyes flash wildly before meeting Andrew’s. _Look away,_ Andrew wants to scream. _Look away or I will gut you. You will wish for this curse._ But Neil’s eyes calm, and in spite of himself Andrew’s pulse evens out, that thundering rush settling into a smooth, easy rhythm.

“Andrew,” Neil says, without a hint of doubt or hesitation.

Wymack mutters something, then gestures at Andrew. “You’ll do it?”

Andrew inhales through his nose as deeply and discreetly as possible. Some of the smoke scent still lingers in his nostrils. “Two bottles of fire whiskey.”

Wymack considers. They both know it’s not the condition he’s weighing. “Deal.”

Andrew nods. “Then we’re square. But you.” He crosses to the table, stopping a foot away from Neil. If he takes another step Neil’s knee might brush his leg. “Don’t waste my time. When I break your curse don’t kill yourself in the process.”

Neil leans forward. Andrew fights the urge to back away in order to maintain the distance between them. This close, the murky brown of Neil’s eyes eddies and swirls like bathwater down a drain. This close, and he looks almost distant. Andrew wonders if he meant to lean forward at all, or if he’s listing from weakness.

“When,” Neil repeats, his mouth curling about the word like a secret.

Andrew jabs a finger hard into his chest. “Don’t make it if.”

Neil rocks backward, and Andrew spins on his heel, heading into the annex to collect Kevin. Renee’s eyes are bright. She doesn’t smile. It’s realer and it’s worse than if she had.

“See if you can survive till tomorrow,” Andrew snarls, and leaves the disaster to brew.


	2. too good to be true

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you find Columbia misspelled as Colombia in this chapter it's because I'm a dumb gay and sleep-deprived

Wymack shows Neil to his office after Andrew leaves. It’s upstairs, sectioned off from the rest of the loft with a few plywood walls and an extra set of wards. The remaining space has been converted into a small, utilitarian apartment: a bed, a kitchenette, and a bathroom the size of a closet with a tin wall serving as a privacy screen. There’s an expanse of open floor in the middle, chalk runes still smeared in a broken circle, and a stack of tomes leaning against the far wall. The air smells like rain.

“You can stay here as long as you need,” Wymack says, watching Neil carefully.

It’s heaven to a dying man.

Neil forces himself to tear his eyes away, even though his longing has already soaked into the floorboards and flown up to perch in the rafters. Heaven often comes with a cost people like Neil can’t pay.

Wymack reads it in his face. He gestures to his office. “Let’s talk business.”

Inside, the office feels bigger than it looks, despite the rows of filing cabinets lining the walls and the maze of cardboard cartons tracing the floor. Wymack eases behind a heavy oak desk cluttered with a dozen tupperware containers and a dozen empty coffee mugs to match. He collects all the loose papers, unearthing a scrying bowl and the keyboard to the computer monitor, an odd combination without the context of his occupation. Several unframed photographs dot the wall behind him. Neil recognizes the facade of the shop and the front gates of the arena, but of all the people, Renee’s is the only familiar face.

“Dan.”

Neil starts. Wymack’s studying the collage as well, his expression all fondness, belying his grumble.

“Stuck them up there with some faerie resin. I could spend the next twenty years trying to pry them off and not even peel up a corner.” Wymack almost smiles. “You’ll probably meet her while you’re here.”

“Is she a cursebreaker?” She wasn’t one of the options Wymack gave him.

Wymack kicks at a chair. Neil drags it a few inches out of his reach and sits.

“No,” Wymack says, shuffling through his paperwork, “she’s just part-time, like most of the team. But when Boyd’s here, she usually isn’t far.”

Dan. Boyd. Abby. Renee. Andrew. He repeats the names in his head. Memorizing the staff may come in handy.

Wymack slides a sheet of paper in front of him. “Here, sign this.”

“What is it?”

“A service contract. And a liability release.”

Neil scans the document. Pretty straightforward, though it rankles him that he can’t utter a detection incantation to reveal any secret clauses. His brain itches at him until he realizes what’s missing. “This says nothing about payment.”

And then he realizes what else is missing. His means of payment. His race winnings. His _duffel_.

He shoves back the chair. “I have to go back to the arena—”

“No, you don’t. We aren’t charging you a damn cent,” Wymack interrupts.

“I still have to go—” Neil’s brain grinds to a halt. His protests cut off as Wymack’s words sink in. _We aren’t charging you a damn cent._ They’re going to break his curse free of charge. Free of a monetary charge. Cursebreaking takes time. It’s complex magic, requiring substantial energy and skill and often putting the cursebreaker’s own life at risk. That’s why it’s such an expensive practice: the compensation is only fair. Neil’s never heard of any magical service being free of charge, without a price or consequence. Bargains breed power. If you think there’s not a trade going on, you’ve already traded your life away. Wymack not naming a price means one thing.

Neil will be in his debt. Neil will owe him a favor. Anything, and Wymack is free to call it in whenever he chooses.

“No,” Neil spits, “I won’t owe you. _No_.”

Wymack rises so quickly he nearly overturns his chair. “Neil, no, you won’t owe us anything. We don’t work by that system here.”

“You expect me to believe that?” Neil scoffs. He flings an arm out, the gesture encompassing the office, the shop downstairs, the whole building. “You couldn’t have all this if you didn’t charge anyone.”

“You’re an exception—”

“No. I won’t be.” Neil wrenches the door open. “I’m going to the arena and I’m getting my money and I’m paying the fee because I’m already putting my _life_ in your hands and I refuse to put anything else. You can’t fool me with this ‘exception’ shit. Nothing is free. Ever. Especially with magic. It demands something in return and we pick prices for someone else to pay. _Always_.”

He’s to the stairs when Wymack snaps, “I won’t take money from a dying man.”

 _A dying man_. Neil feels something plummet in his chest, his stomach. He accidentally crushes it beneath his heel. It’s true, then, what he suspected all along. Before he ever visited the sage, back in Hernandez’s house poring over the grimoire. He’s dying. _Bad, bad, bad_. A goodbye.

Muffled through the walls, he hears Wymack righting their chairs, moving about the office. Neil stares down the narrow staircase and sees the tendrils of his magic snaking away into the dark instead. He returns to the office, where Wymack once again sits behind the desk, but doesn’t retake his seat. He stands behind it, fingertips pressing into the top rail of the chair.

“Don’t sugarcoat it.”

“It’s bad.” Wymack shrugs. “Blood magic.”

Neil frowns. “How do you know?”

Wymack slides a file folder across the desk. “From the notes your sage sent. The black blood we saw. Abby’s preliminary exam. Renee said she could smell it on you.”

Neil shudders. Weird, but okay. That isn’t even the scariest thing about Renee.

“For what it’s worth, you wouldn’t have been able to pay the fee anyway. Not with the race winnings.”

Anxiety and relief curdle in his gut in tandem. “If not money, then what else? What else can I barter so I won’t owe you?” The wood of the chair creaks under his hands.

Wymack leans back. “I don’t hold any of my people in my debt.”

Neil’s heart picks up the pace. “I’m not . . . ” He can’t finish it. A strange mix of denial and hope and paralytic fear freezes him in place, steals the words from his throat. Leaves him breathless and thrumming and gripping the chair so tight the wood cracks and splinters.

Wymack rises. “You are. You have been since I gave you a key to the annex.”

He reaches in his pocket and pulls out the business card mechanically. It’s no longer blank. Instead, a dark blot quivers on the cardstock, morphing into a hybrid symbol, a cross between a rune and a hieroglyph. It resembles first a Celtic knot, then resolves into a woven fox head, outlined in flame and thorns and paw prints.

The loft. The annex. A key of his own.

Things that won’t fit in his duffel.

“Your people.” Neil lifts his head. His eyes catch on the wall of photos, landing on another picture of the arena, this time with that same group of girls crowded around the gladiator pit, Wymack in the background wearing a Team Master’s medallion. _A Team Master. A team_. “Let me run for you,” he blurts.

Wymack blows out through his nose. “Neil, you don’t have to try to rack up winnings—”

“I’m not talking about the petty races. Your team. If I’m your people, let me be on your team. I can do the relay—you know I can run. You break my curse,” Neil grins, “and I break your records.”

 _And no one breaks the fundamental magical rules of bartering_ goes unsaid.

“You can’t do the relay without using magic,” Wymack disagrees.

Neil insists, “I’m fast enough. I can do it. I have before.”

 _And nearly died_ also goes unsaid.

Wymack scrutinizes him. Neil stands as straight as possible even though his back aches from the flight and lying on too many hard surfaces today. Finally he relents, “We’ll do a trial run.”

The loft. The annex. A key. A team. Neil takes a deep breath.

“We aren’t going to fuck around with this. If you can’t do it, you can’t do it,” Wymack warns. Neil nods. “Come on. Let me show you what your key unlocks.”

 

 

  
Even though Wymack had given him a tour the night before, and his key had definitely worked then, Neil still expects the annex to not open for him when he goes down the next morning.

The shop isn’t open yet, early morning light slanting golden and hazy through the cracks in the blinds drawn over the front windows. Neil steps carefully over the thin bars of sunlight they cast upon the floor as he makes his way through the shop. The back room, devoid of any windows, is dark when he pushes the door open. Shadows skitter away from the break in the darkness, melting into the walls and scuttling beneath furniture. Neil gives them a second to relocate themselves before he flicks on the lights.

His mother taught him respect for the shadows. You never know when you’ll need a place to hide.

He lingers in the back room, poking around, roaming restlessly. He’d slept restlessly too, anxious for the morning and his meeting with Andrew. He studiously avoids looking at the back wall.

Seeing the annex had been . . .

Terrifying. It had been terrifying and painful and if Wymack hadn’t been in the way Neil would have run right out the door and not stopped till he crossed the city limits. But Wymack had been in the way, so he’d stood, frozen, forced to confront the jagged longing swelling up within him as he took the annex in. It was worse than the apartment upstairs, because that had been _for now,_ while the annex was _forever_. As long as his forever lasted, as long as Neil lasted.

Wymack explained the rules of the annex as Neil gathered the courage to explore the space. It was twice the size of the back room, capable of expanding and shrinking to accommodate its fellowship. Wymack couldn’t revoke access—no one could. Once you had the key, it was yours to keep. The key itself was the sigil, activated by the deliberate gifting. The card didn’t matter; it was a simple vessel. Wymack had seen the sigil transferred to a variety of different vessels: amulets, watches, runestones, blades, even hair. Neil decided to keep the card for now.

Neil finally managed to move as Wymack described the dimensional magic responsible for shaping the annex. Two long work tables occupied most of the room, their surfaces an orderly chaos suspended in the midst of projects. A sprawling skylight illuminated the tables. Hanging crystal fixtures provided light for the edges of the room, leaving the corners for the shadows. Embers glowed in the massive hearth. Spiral stairs climbed up to a trapdoor in the ceiling, and a similar door in the floor led to a cellar. All of this spoke of peace and promise, but the court was what beckoned to Neil.

It was smaller than an arena’s, obviously makeshift in its construction. Garden stakes strung with twine marked off its boundaries. Within the rectangle was packed dirt instead of fine sand. Despite these modifications the intention was clear. Here in the annex someone had built a model of the pit in which the Games’ relay was run.

This place, such an eclectic mix of styles and magic and all the best parts of his runaway upbringing, couldn’t be real. It couldn’t be Neil’s.

_“The annex is for the ones who need something more.”_

Neil doesn’t know how to reconcile all the things he’d relegated to want in order to survive with what he might really need if he lives.

He knew he couldn’t stay in Millport, even without the curse. He knows he can’t stay here either, because of it. But this shop, the annex—it’s a place to rest.

That knowledge was a knife scraping against his ribs. His heartstrings tangled in a knot of want and need and he had no idea how much he would lose if he snipped it clean. When he cut and run. The fact that he could stand still at all in that room when every instinct should have been screaming to run from any attachment was a portent of his destruction.

He should be scared of what lies behind that secret door. Instead he paces in the back room, scared he won’t ever get to see it again.

 _It won’t open,_ fear trills at him. _It won’t open for you. It won’t open for a dying runaway dripping death and darkness._

“Afraid the curse will steal your legs again?” drawls Andrew.

Neil jumps, palming the knife still in his shorts. Andrew watches from the entrance to the back room, blank-faced and bored. He leans against the doorway, arms folded, looking like he’s become part of the threshold and won’t be separating from it any time soon.

“Afraid if you stop lurking you’ll actually have to do your job?” retorts Neil.

“Just wishing the curse would steal your mouth, too.” Andrew peels himself off the door frame. “We have work to do.”

“Are you trying to sound dramatic?” Neil asks, following Andrew over to a blank stretch of wall.

Andrew stops an arm’s length away from it. He glances at Neil. “Are you trying to stall?” he counters.

“Yes, I’m trying to stall you preventing my death,” says Neil. “I’ve become best friends with this curse and I actually don’t want you to remove it.”

Andrew nods. “I can see why someone would curse you.”

Neil laughs. It’s not a pleasant sound. “You’d think they’d just make me mute.”

Andrew’s chest rises sharply at that, a sign of a sudden breath, though this close surely Neil would have heard that as well as seen it. “They must not be as stupid as you,” he says. He turns his head swiftly, his stare catching Neil’s before he can skirt away. “They knew you would find a way.”

Neil doesn’t flinch when Andrew punctuates the conversation by driving a knife into the wall. The sigil etched into the hilt glows as it sears into the wall, and then the wall is not a wall but a door, with a fox’s head burned into the wood. Andrew yanks his knife free, sliding it back into his armbands, and opens the door.

Relief spills out of Neil as he steps inside. He brushes his fingers over the mark on the door, solid and warm beneath his touch. It is real. Glancing at him, Andrew frowns but says nothing. It’s a pass, and Neil takes it, allowing himself a moment to breathe in the mingling scents of spice and pine and smoke and greenery, that heady mix he’d convinced his brain he imagined overnight. He swallows the tumult it inspires down. There’s not enough time in a moment to deal with that.

Andrew’s busy at one of the worktables, his arms full of sacks and jars and boxes as he grinds at a mortar. Neil joins him and holds out his hands.

Andrew pauses long enough to wave the pestle about. “My hands are full without holding yours, Neil.”

Neil rolls his eyes. “So give me some of that. I’ll carry it.” He reaches for one of the sacks slipping out from Andrew’s elbow but freezes when Andrew’s whole body stiffens. “Can I carry it?”

Andrew’s fingers curl tightly about the pestle. “No.”

“Okay.” Neil steps back. “Is there something I can do?”

Andrew clenches his jaw. “Just—just go over there.” He jerks his chin sharply over his shoulder. “Now. Don’t you know how being a client works?”

Neil stretches, then plops down on the ground in the general area Andrew indicated. “Do you? Aren’t you supposed to not be rude to me?”

“If you wanted someone polite you should have picked Renee.”

Neil folds his arms over his knees and lays his cheek across his forearm, watching the fluid movements of Andrew’s arms and the muscles of his back flexing under his shirt as he works. He’s still tense, but not as much now that Neil’s at a distance.

Andrew finishes at the table and moves on to preparations of the space, chalking circles and sigils onto the floor around Neil.

“What do I do?” Neil asks.

Andrew doesn’t look up from the glyph he’s drawing. “Sit there and don’t offer to help.”

Neil lifts his head. “I’m supposed to sit here the whole time? What if I can’t sit still?”

Andrew sets the chalk down outside of the circle. He picks up the mortar and comes to crouch in front of Neil, a paintbrush in one hand. “You’ll be in a trance. You won’t be moving,” he says. He swirls the brush across Neil’s brow.

Neil twitches. He can’t help it. Mary trained him to run from exactly the kind of vulnerability a trance presents. He presses his hands into the floor, presses back against the urge, the itch, in his legs, in his head. Andrew paints a mask of symbols across his face and lights a crystal in a bowl and Neil fights against the rising panic in his chest as time gets closer and closer. Finally there’s nothing more left to do but begin.

Andrew leans over to adjust the crystal bowl, his lips parting to speak, and Neil shoves to his feet. He makes it a step towards the edge of the largest circle before Andrew sweeps his legs out from under him. His back slams into the floor.

Andrew drags him up by a handful of his shirt. Neil braces himself for a hit—the only time he’s ever been this close to someone was during a fight. But Andrew only takes hold of his chin, bringing their faces close enough that Neil has no choice but to look him in the eye.

“It’s time for you to stop running,” Andrew says.

Neil chokes back laughter. “It’s not that easy.”

“Isn’t it?” Neil jerks out of the way as Andrew slashes out with a blade. Neil rolls to the side, scrambling up. Andrew sits back, calmly returning the knife to his sleeve. “You clearly have strong survival instincts. What part of running away from someone about to break your curse falls in line with those?”

Neil glares. “How about the part where I’m defenseless and stuck in a trance?”

Andrew has the audacity to roll his eyes. “I’m going to be just as vulnerable as you are. Do you really think I’d leave myself defenseless?”

Andrew seems like the last person to ever leave himself defenseless, but Neil doesn’t see what either of them can do about it.

Andrew must realize Neil’s not grasping whatever he’s trying to get at. “Look at this.” He traces the outline of the circle with his foot. “It’s an Arimathean Circle.”

Neil peers at the shape of it. “What does math have to do with this? Is it a perfect circle or something?”

“What? No, _Arimathean_ , not arithmetic,” Andrew corrects. Neil folds his arms. “An Arimathean Circle?”

“Is that a cursebreaker technique?”

Andrew frowns. “It’s a powerful shield. As someone on the run I thought you of all people would be familiar.”

 _A shield_. Everything Andrew said clicks into place. The panic eases in his chest. He settles down across from Andrew, careful not to smear any of his deliberate lines. Shrugging, he admits, “All the magic I know, I learned on the streets. Just picked up different things from the people we met, the places we visited.”

Andrew’s nose wrinkles. He spits out “street magic” like it tastes disgusting on his tongue.

Neil tries to hold back the grin curling at his mouth. Andrew shoots him a foul look. Neil leans forward. “Enlighten me as to how the Circle works.”

He pays acute attention as Andrew walks him through the steps of the Circle, its uses, what it will guard against and what it will fail to keep out.

“The important part is the blood,” Andrew says, slicing his palm open. “You can draw the shittiest circle ever, and it won’t matter. The sacrifice of the living blood is what gives the Circle power and grants you protection. It doesn’t require any magic but what’s in your veins.”

Andrew’s blood drips onto the outline of the circle. The chalk dust sizzles, and a curtain of light shimmers into the air around them. Neil waits for the light to fade, then tries to look out at the rest of the annex. Just like Andrew said, the world appears blurry outside the boundary line.

“Are you ready?” Andrew asks.

“This will keep us safe?”

“You know it will. Stop stalling.”

Neil takes a deep breath. “Okay. I’m ready.”

Andrew cups the back of his head with one hand and presses his thumb into the center of Neil’s forehead. Neil closes his eyes and feels himself sink.

 

 

He’s been here before. He’ll be here again. But as he sits in the cool dark, he has the feeling he wasn’t supposed to be back so soon.

He rises. This time, he makes a point of shaping a corporeal form, not just a specter. One that looks like the version of himself in the outside world, with the black hair and brown eyes of his last disguise. The knowing is slower than before, incomplete, and he isn’t sure if he’ll see Andrew or hear his voice like he did Leona’s. Surely this is where Andrew will go to break the curse. The curse wants Neil’s magic, and Neil’s magic is here.

He walks and walks. The strings of all his bonds glimmer in the distance. If he cracks his eyes their light blends into a loom weaving a tapestry of all he is. But no matter how far he walks, he comes no closer to reaching them. So he sits. And waits. It’s almost easy to relax here in this empty stillness, this sacred space, where he exists and nothing else matters. _Almost_ easy, because without the whispers of magic in his ears, the silence is unnerving.

Predatory.

Without the whispers, without the knowing, without the threads of all his bonds within reach, there’s no comfort, and there’s nothing to assure him he isn’t trapped.

As soon as the thought forms, he feels something lap at his leg. It’s a puddle, iridescent like an oil spill, swaying back and forth with the tide that’s carried it here out of the darkness. Neil scoots away from it, and it trickles after him. He scrambles to his feet, stumbling in the direction of the light. A stream splits off and follows him. He glances behind to check the size of the puddle. When he looks forward, the light’s vanished. He falters. His steps stutter, shoes splashing. _Splashing_. He breaks into a run, switching directions, hiking his legs high, trying to get out of this, but the liquid changes, a sludge he can’t move through. By the time it rises to his waist he’s immobilized.

He doesn’t care about the wounds. He reaches, reaches, reaches—but there’s no magic to grab.

_Has it killed me already?_

The sludge pins his arms to his sides and tickles his jaw. He’s going to drown.

“Andrew,” he chokes out. _“Andrew.”_

And then Andrew is _there_ , his face dirty and smeared like grease paint, yanking Neil out of the sludge with impossible strength. Sticky tendrils cling to him, latching onto his limbs and pulling him back down, but Andrew’s grip never wavers and Neil’s head never goes under. With his free hand Andrew raises his fist, glowing blue light shining from the cracks between his fingers, and then punches it into the sludge. The light in his hand races through the sludge like shattering glass and Neil cries out in unison with the sludge, screaming as it explodes, flinging him

 

 

into his body. Gasping, Neil flails around, rubbing down his limbs to make sure there’s no sludge here and to rid himself of the phantom sensation of it against his skin. It takes minutes for the panic to recede, for his breathing to calm enough that he can actually register what he sees.

He sees the wooden bowl, empty. He sees Andrew’s open hand, embedded with broken fragments of crystal he tries digging out with a knife. He sees Andrew’s hair, sticking to his temples with sweat. He sees Andrew’s face, his furrowed brow, his intent eyes. He sees through the hazy barrier, and he sees a man with green eyes and ink on his cheek on the other side. Watching them.

Neil tenses.

_It’s time for you to stop running._

He takes a breath. He says, “Andrew.”

Andrew flicks a chunk of crystal at him but doesn’t look up.

He says, “We have an audience.”

Andrew makes a dismissive noise and continues mutilating his palm.

Neil studies him. Andrew doesn’t look triumphant, but he doesn’t look defeated either. He just looks halfway-focused on his current task and like he gives two shits about the rest of the world. His face is clean of everything, especially whatever emotion Neil thought he saw there in the sludge.

Neil says, “Are we done?”

Andrew’s eyes snap to his. “No.”

Neil nods. “I thought I’d feel it. If the curse broke, I thought I would feel something. But I didn’t feel anything that time.”

“You will feel it.” Andrew smirks. “You’ll probably puke, too.”

Neil wrinkles his nose. “I didn’t know being vomited on was one of the hazards of being a cursebreaker.”

“Vomit on me and I’ll kill you,” Andrew says flatly. Neil’s mouth quirks into something like a grin without his consent. It’s a warning, no inch of it a joke, but it’s almost humorous too.

All of Neil’s humor must revolve around death because he says, with that same funny honesty, “The curse might beat you to it.”

Andrew doesn’t find that amusing. He sets down the knife. “I will not let it kill you. I promise.”

Neil’s chest tightens up. Andrew’s eyes burn, searing him with his words, this sudden weight between them palpable, like they’re either end of a rope looped through an anchor.

“Neil,” Andrew prompts. He won’t look away and Neil doesn’t know what to do with this. Breaking the curse is Andrew’s contractual job, but this feels like more somehow. Neil’s never had _more_ before. He’s had what it took to keep going; the races were just another form of that, really. Even his mother never made him a promise of protection—Mary didn’t make promises she knew she couldn’t keep. And by instinct Neil knows that neither would Andrew, with this fire in his eyes that would set the world aflame. He means it. Neil feels like he’s the one making a choice here, with this promise dropped in his lap. “Neil,” Andrew presses.

“Okay,” Neil says, except it sounds rough and hoarse, and his voice cracks on the second syllable like Andrew’s eyes have scorched his throat. He coughs and tries again, “You promise. Okay.”

Andrew lingers a moment longer, then climbs to his feet and scuffs the chalk circle with his shoe. The barrier instantly dissolves. Neil jumps up as the man outside approaches them.

First he accosts Andrew. “Did you do it?”

All the fire is gone when Andrew asks, bored, “Do what?”

“Break his curse!”

“No.”

“Why not!”

Andrew’s answering expression is dark enough to cow the man, who shuffles closer to Neil instead, sulking.

“You still can’t do magic?” he asks Neil.

Neil raises his eyebrows. “Do you want to find out?”

He whirls on Andrew. “You said you didn’t break his curse.”

Andrew wanders over to his work table. “I didn’t.”

The man groans. He advances toward Neil. “So you can’t do magic.”

Neil clenches his fists. “Take another step if you want to try me.”

Andrew, perched on the table now, grins, full of teeth. “Yes, Kevin, try him. He’ll puke tar all over you.”

The man, Kevin, wrinkles his nose. He retreats a few steps in distance but not his attitude to Neil. “Wymack said you’re on the team. You can run a race without it? And _win_?”

Some of Neil’s hostility evaporates, replaced by a burst of energy. His fervor for the races isn’t something he’s gotten to share with anyone before. _“Yes.”_

“I need to see it. Come to the arena with me.”

Neil’s halfway to the door, hot on Kevin’s heels, when he pauses, glancing back at Andrew, who’s smearing salve on his palm and wrapping it in gauze. Neil blinks, turning his own hand over. The cut he’d made to access the grimoire is still a puckered, angry red, though he’d neglected bandaging it the past two days. He closes his fist. His eagerness scattered all his thoughts, and Neil isn’t sure which role he’s supposed to play right now.

It comes out like a question. “I’m leaving?”

Andrew raises his eyebrows. “Are you asking for my permission?”

“Do you have a reason for me to stay?” Neil gestures at the broken circle and the cluttered work table, like the answers to breaking his curse lie there waiting to be picked up and dusted off.

Andrew lets his gaze roll around the annex, bouncing off the model relay pit pointedly. “Don’t you already have one?”

Neil’s stomach lurches. Andrew is not talking about a visit to the arena with Kevin.

“Neil!” Kevin snaps, his scowling head hanging around the doorway. The closer Neil gets to Kevin’s face, the more familiar that dark blotch on his cheekbone looks.

“Go on,” Andrew says. He waves his hand as if to shoo Neil away, but Neil isn’t watching his hands. He’s watching the slump of Andrew’s shoulders, the heavy lids of his eyes, even the curve of Andrew’s mouth following the listless droop of the rest of his body. He’s wiped away the sweat but his damp hair still curls a little around his ears.

“Rosemary,” Neil blurts out. “Helps with fatigue.”

He doesn’t give Andrew time to respond. The words trip off his tongue and Neil bolts out the door after Kevin.

 

 

Kevin convinces Wymack to drive them to the arena. It’s a short ride, easy enough for Neil to memorize the route and walk it in his sleep. Even so, Kevin’s impatient in the front seat, drumming a beat on the console between him and Wymack, periodically rolling down the window for fresh air. Wymack asks once if he needs to call Andrew and Kevin snaps back that he’ll stop feeling  _flighty_ when they get to the track. Wymack speeds up.

From his vantage point in the backseat, Kevin’s tattoo still looks like a blob. A childish blob, at that, like whoever took a needle to his skin was less an amateur tattoo artist and more a drunk fourteen year old failing art class. Nevertheless, Neil’s nerves crawl under his skin. He can’t shake the feeling that it should mean something to him.

When they finally pull through the gates—not the front, but the back entrance Wymack has special access too—Kevin all but bails out of the car. Neil, who has actual experience bailing out of cars, elects to wait for Wymack to stop the vehicle. Wymack gives him a nod of approval, as if by not pointlessly jumping out of the car Neil’s passed some great test of character.

Kevin’s already darted off to the locker rooms with his head start. Neil checks to make sure Wymack’s busy setting up the track, then takes a detour to the pegasus paddock. He finds his duffel where he stashed it yesterday. He’ll have to do inventory later. Retrieving his stuff might have been his real motivation for coming here, but he still wants to show Kevin exactly how well he can _win_ without using magic.

He jogs back to the track. Wymack’s activated the obstacle course, the landscape roiling and shifting as it warms up for a practice run. Kevin crouches on top of the temporary fence, his feet gripping the posts, his balance so steady a maelstrom couldn’t move him. Fixated on tracking the course’s topography, he doesn’t notice Neil’s arrival until Neil climbs up on the fence next to him.

He glances at Neil for the briefest second before his attention snaps back to the course, a rubber band with limited elasticity. “Took you long enough.”

“You don’t look like you’re in a hurry.”

Kevin scoffs. “Any idiot can run around out there like a fool and get a decent time. If you want to be fast, you train. You prepare.”

Neil’s arms prickle. He feels goosebumps ripple across his skin under the morning sun. “And if you want to be the best?”

“If you want to be the best,” Kevin says, lifting his chin, “then you don’t beat the course. You beat your opponent.”

Pride glints off Kevin like sunlight off metal, but it isn’t arrogance. He’s suddenly bigger than Neil by more than just inches, and there’s a power and a confidence in him as he speaks that reminds Neil of the absolute surety of the soul. Kevin is no casual racer, and that is no casual tattoo. _The best,_ Neil had said, and he’s starting to get a devastating idea of who he’s sitting next to.

“To do that, you have to make the course an asset, not an obstacle. You learn it so you know it as well as you know yourself. If its movements are your instincts, then your movements can shape the course to your will,” Kevin explains. He grins sharply. “Then it’s not a race so much as a fox hunt.”

Adrenaline and freedom. That’s what the races are to Neil, why he loves them, but to Kevin, they’re something entirely different. To Kevin, the races are art. Looking at them that way adds a whole new dimension to every event, inverts everything Neil thought he knew. Strategy, timing, running—that’s all the petty races took, and he sees now why they’re just the opening act, the warm up for the greater challenge.

His head spins. Kevin hops down from the fence, impossibly light, and Neil jumps off after him. He leads Neil to the west starting point of the course, a seamless stone wall that towers fifteen feet over Neil’s head. Kevin slaps the wall like it’s an old pal, and the stone shudders. Gleaming spikes shoot out from the wall, razor thin and twice as sharp. As soon as they emerge, they retreat, popping out again at a different spot. Kevin steps back.

Neil looks from Kevin to the wall. “Aren’t you going to practice your preaching?”

Kevin folds his arms. “Let’s see what you can do first.”

Neil shrugs. He does a few stretches to loosen up. “Get the flag?” During a relay, the objective of the obstacle course segment is to make it through and claim the flag before the other team can, so you can then deliver it to your waiting Keeper.

“If you can make it over the wall.”

 

 

It takes Neil ten tries to make it over the wall. His shirt is in tatters by the time he pulls himself over the top, pausing on the ledge it creates to overlook the rest of the course below. His arms are quivering jelly, he only made it this time out of dumb luck, and his eyes sting from sweat that he can’t wipe away because his hands are slippery with blood, but at least he only got impaled twice—

A spike stabs up straight through his right foot.

“FUCK.”

The spike retracts. Neil pitches himself off the top of the wall before he turns into a human pincushion. Blood ribbons through the air from his foot as he falls. He thinks blood is maybe not supposed to do that, but feet aren’t supposed to have spikes driven through them either, so.

He crashes through some foliage, bounces off a column, and lands in a shallow pool. His arms still hate him after multiple climbs up a twenty foot wall, so he rolls his way toward the edge of the pool. He tries, anyway. No matter how much he rolls, or splashes, he’s no closer to land.

Fine. He stops rolling and levers himself into a sitting position, resolving to not slack on crunches if he lives to ever work out. Carefully, he works his shoe off his injured foot. He binds the wound as best he can, then starts looking around for an alternative way of leaving the pool. He keeps the ruined shoe close as an available projectile.

There’s nothing overhead to grab, nothing in the sand where he sits. There’s not even the faintest tremor of the ground about to move. The landscape here is unusually static.

As if getting over the wall without magic wasn’t difficult enough. It would have been so easy to fly over. It’d be even easier to dig out now.

Dig out. Neil puts his hand on the bottom of the pool, sliding it down the slope of the cool sand to the deepest part of the pool.

_Make the course an asset._

Neil doubts this is what Kevin had in mind, but it’s all he’s got. If he stays where he is, he can either give up or bleed out. Neither of those are acceptable options.

The bottom of the pool is flat. Solid. Neil backs up as far as he can, struggling to stand on his good foot. Now that he has no intention of leaving via shore, he can go farther than he could before. When he’s got enough distance, mainly dictated by his rapidly deteriorating balance, he closes his eyes and leaps, head-first, straight down toward the bottom of the pool. It’s pretty much a belly flop, but his face smacks off the sand first, so if Kevin tries to critique his methods he’s demanding to see Kevin’s diving proficiency certification.

He hits the bottom, and gravity shifts, and suddenly he’s not in the pool anymore. He opens his eyes and immediately scrabbles for purchase on the side of the slick boulder he’s sliding down. He manages to grab hold of the lip of it, but the slope of the rock increases and his legs flip over his head and his shoulder screams and he falls—

_change change change WINGS GRACE AGILITY WEB WEB CHANGE SHIFT NOW_

_NO_

Neil’s back slams into hard-packed dirt. He gasps, struggling for air, the wind knocked out of him. His mind is still in free fall and he doesn’t know what shape he is, can’t tell what his limbs are—

A rough hand grabs his (he has hands) and yanks him upright, catching him when he tries to put weight on his bad foot and his legs buckle (he has legs). His vision slowly comes into focus (horrible) and color (reds and oranges and blues and browns). He’s human. He didn’t shift. Relief and disappointment mingle in his gut (definitely human, emotions are only this messy as a human).

Wymack lowers him onto a bench before Neil can flinch out of his grip. He looks around. They’ve deactivated the obstacle course, leaving the barren track in its place. Kevin fumes nearby.

“Why’d you pull me out?” Neil demands, as soon as he gets his breath back.

“Impaling your foot wasn’t enough? You’d rather have impaled your spine too?” barks Wymack.

“My foot will be fine.” It was more of a dull throb than real pain now, anyway, and it was never his top concern. “I didn’t get the flag!”

“You weren’t going to get the flag,” Kevin says, scoffing. “You couldn’t even walk!”

Wymack makes some kind of gesture, like _listen to him, he has common sense for once_. Then Kevin opens his mouth again.

“What part of _make the course an asset_ did you interpret as _maim yourself?_ If you do that during an actual match, you might as well hand all our flags over to the other team yourself,” Kevin hisses. “You did better with dark magic warping your guts during the petty race! Maybe that’s where you belong. Maybe this was all a mistake.”

Neil lunges for Kevin. He’s awkward and slow but Kevin doesn’t expect it, so he gets a fistful of Kevin’s shirt and uses it to keep himself up. Rage and adrenaline hold the pain at bay. He drags Kevin’s face down. “It’s not a mistake,” he snarls.

“You’re worthless this way,” Kevin dismisses.

He feels this new life unspooling, the loft and the annex and his spot on the team, all dissolving around him and disappearing into the darkness. He should accept it, resign himself to the debt to Wymack, take his duffel and run the second Andrew breaks his curse. This should be a sign to let go. It should be, but he already felt his magic slipping away from him, and he can’t lose this too before he’s even gotten to taste what it would be like. It’s cruel to give him so much and take it away so soon, and he’s so tired of cruelty, so sick of it haunting him. It got its due when he burned his mother’s body on the beach.

He tightens his grip on Kevin’s shirt. “This is all I have. Tell me what I have to do.”

Something shifts in Kevin’s expression. “You’ll have to start from scratch. You’ll have to let me teach you. Race my way.”

He spares a moment to mourn his reckless way of racing, but only a moment. His leg can’t take much more. Neil releases Kevin’s shirt. “Deal.”

“We start tonight,” Kevin announces.

“You’ll start tomorrow,” Wymack cuts in, shoving a pair of crutches at Neil. “I’m taking you to see Abby.”

Neil wedges the crutches under his arms. “I need my bag first.”

“Where did you get a bag?” Wymack asks.

Neil stares blankly back at him.

Wymack shakes his head. “Fine. It’s better I don’t know. Kevin.” Kevin jerks, tearing his gaze away from the dirt. Neil doesn’t see what could have fixated him other than a chip of shiny black rock. “Call Andrew. Tell him to get to the shop if he isn’t there already.”

Kevin frowns even as he pulls out his phone. “Why?”

“I’m tired of your defiance and getting rid of you,” Wymack deadpans. Kevin’s frown deepens. “Neil is his case. He should know his condition before he bleeds out.”

Kevin lowers the phone. “Do you think bleeding the curse out of Neil would be quicker than breaking it?”

“Call Andrew,” Wymack snaps.

“It’s a fair question,” Kevin mutters, lifting the phone to his ear. “Blood magic’s all about blood.”

Kevin steps away. Neil glances at Wymack. “Seriously, would it be quicker?”

“I don’t get paid enough for this,” Wymack says.

“ _I’m_ not paying you at all,” Neil reminds him.

“Good, I don’t have to answer then. Come on. We’ll meet him at the car.”

 

 

Abby treats his foot and rewraps it before giving him strict instructions to rest and heal. It’s a quick, easy process, and even if Abby’s hands are softer and her smiles kinder, Neil remembers his mother and her practical efficiency.

Memories of his mother just lead to memories of the beach, so he excuses himself under the pretense of stashing his bag. This venture means crossing the short distance from the back room to the stairwell in the middle of the day, but the exposure slips his mind.

“Hey! Curse Boy!”

Neil tries to whip around and nearly loses one of his crutches. By the time he recovers it, it’s too late. One of the three women lounging about the counter has already peeled off toward him. There’s something familiar about her buzzcut, but Neil can’t place her; panic sparks in his chest like a lighter struggling to produce flame. Mary crossed a lot of people. If any of them found him, especially now—

The woman smiles in greeting, and it suddenly clicks. The pictures in Wymack’s office. The group of girls. She was one of them.

“Neil, right?” she asks. “I’m Dan. Dan Wilds. Wymack mentioned you were staying upstairs.”

Neil nods. “Yeah, he mentioned you when he gave me the tour.”

Dan raises her eyebrows. “Good things?”

Neil shrugs. “Sounded like he prefers you over Kevin.”

She laughs at that, bright and pleased and sharp. “God, I hope so. That’s a pretty low bar, for all of us.”

“Good, I can’t jump very high right now.” Neil leans heavily on one crutch in order to wave the other in the air.

Dan’s eyebrows shoot higher. “I honestly can’t tell if that was meant as a joke or not.”

It wasn’t, but it doesn’t really matter either. He doesn’t need Wymack to like him; he already has his bargain.

“It’s slow right now, so come meet the others, Neil,” Dan invites. She glances from him to the counter and back with a grin that does the opposite of encourage Neil.

“I have to go put this away,” he excuses, patting his bag. He turns again for the stairs.

Dan catches his upper arm, her grip like iron. Her grin turns sharp, and Neil reads the message there loud and clear: he could escape (he’s already got a dozen plans, including sweeping her legs out with his crutch) but it would not be a clean or an easy getaway.

“Nice try,” she says. “Come on.”

Neil lets her tow him over to the counter, where a blond woman is already leering at him and Renee is sitting next to the cash register in lotus position. She smiles at him kindly, the same way she had last night before he picked Andrew. Neil angles himself so both Dan and the blond woman are between them.

Neil doesn’t trust anyone who looks so deliberately soft. Her rainbow hair, her pastel clothes, her bare feet. She looks sweet as a lamb, but lambs aren’t cursebreakers. Which means she’s presenting a lie.

The blond woman interrupts his staredown with Renee, leaning across the counter. Her stool teeters precariously. Renee steadies it with a toe as the woman drums her nails on the wood. Finally she announces, “ _You_ are cute.” She wrinkles her nose. “But the clothes? They have to go. Have to. Do the world a favor and incinerate them. God, I can’t even tell what that stain is under all the sweat and blood.”

Dan laughs. “Neil, this is Allison Reynolds. Allison, this is—”

“My new project,” declares Allison. “If I can fix him, it’ll be proof I can fix anyone.”

“Fix me?” Neil shakes his head. “No, Andrew’s already my cursebreaker.”

Allison flips her hair over her shoulder. “I’m not talking about that inconvenience. I’m talking about the major problem. One _Minyard_ would never be able to solve. Did you see what he wearing today? All black. Again!”

Inconvenience. She called his life-threatening curse an inconvenience.

“He wears all black every day, Allison,” Dan points out.

Are they really discussing Andrew’s wardrobe? Neil discreetly sniffs the collar of his own shirt. It reeks of sweat, but that’ll wash out. No need to burn anything. No need to be anyone’s project.

“We’ll go shopping tomorrow, when you’re done with Minyard,” Allison tells him.

Tomorrow? He has an out for that! “I’m training with Kevin tomorrow.”

“For how long?” she demands.

Neil blanks his face. “Till I’m the best.”

Dan groans.

“How did Kevin already get his hooks in you?” Allison rages. “Why did he even want his hooks in you?”

The jangling of the bells over the door cuts off her rant. Dan greets the new customer and Allison raises a magazine as a shield to deflect any interaction. The customer, an old lady with bifocals thicker than a window pane, calls Dan to help her read labels, and Neil considers making a break for it.

Renee speaks for the first time. “Neil. Do you have a moment?”

He’s tempted to say no and sneak away, but he’s also curious as to what she wants. Curious if her mouth will lie as much as her appearance. So he taps his crutch against the floor and nods.

Renee gestures him to the side, out of the way of any purchases. They scoot down the length of the counter, and then Renee pats the space next to her. “You’ll need to sit for this.”

Neil’s arms are still sore from climbing the wall, but he manages to clamber up onto the counter, leaving his feet dangling, bracketed by his crutches. Renee reaches behind the counter for something and then mirrors his pose. Her toenails are painted a delicate shade of pink. Between the two of them they’ve got one shoe.

Renee turns whatever she retrieved between her fingers. “How are you?” she asks softly.

Neil forces himself to remain loose. “I’m fine.”

“Did you expect to be cured this morning?”

Neil twists to gauge her expression. Its openness surprises him. There’s nothing prying there, nothing jealous or malicious or speculative. And no smile, either. Just mild concern and simplicity, a question asked without anything hanging upon his answer. It’s an odd sensation. He isn’t used to conversations free of weight. He finds no point in searching for an angle to play here, not when her mouth is an even line.

“I suppose I didn’t,” Neil admits. “Wymack called it blood magic.”

Renee hums. “And blood magic means death?”

“In conjunction with a life-sucking curse, I’d say yeah,” Neil drawls. He glances at the object in her lap. Slim, oblong, glass. A small vial. “What’s that for?”

“You’re right. Blood magic is dangerous, and tricky, so Andrew asked me to look at a sample of your blood.” Renee sets the vial down beside his thigh. “If that’s alright with you.”

That smile again. The hair on his arms stands up. “Do you consult on all of Andrew’s cases?”

“No. But if I can help, I will. Andrew is my friend.”

Neil picks up the vial, rolling it between his thumb and first two fingers. Andrew trusts her. If he wants to live, he has to trust Andrew. He hands the vial back. “Alright.” He starts rolling his sleeve up over his elbow.

“Oh, no, not from there.” Renee shakes her head. “Andrew said you have a knife?”

Of course it can’t be so easy. He digs his switchblade out of his pants pocket. Renee takes it, handling it as naturally as if she was born with it in her hand. Neil braces himself for some deep wound, but Renee merely lifts his hand and pricks his finger.

Neil frowns. “That will be a small sample.”

Renee positions the vial to catch the drop of blood welling up from the cut. She waits for it to slip over the lip of the tube while Neil resigns himself to five minutes of her squeezing his finger, if they even have that long before his blood clots.

Then Renee says, “Stay still,” and something passes through her eyes that makes Neil freeze, his blood like ice.

Ice that abruptly thaws, and starts to _move_.

He _feels_ it moving through his body in a way he never has, in a way you aren’t supposed to, and it’s a horrifying, sickening awareness, exacerbated by the fear increasing the tempo of his heart, pushing it all faster, faster.

He wants to cry out, throw up, but he can’t move.

He watches Renee pull the blood out of his finger without comprehension, his brain lost and screaming and overloaded with this new nightmare sense. Once the vial is filled, she stoppers it and brushes her finger over the cut on his. His skin knits back together. The awareness slowly, excruciatingly slowly, starts to fade.

He chokes out a sob, doubling over. His brain blinks back online, but it’s still another moment before he can process any thought other than _relief relief relief_.

He’s shaking. More than anything he wishes he could be something small, something small enough to curl up in some dark corner and feel safe. It’s the closest he can come now to his mother’s form of comfort, sheltering him with blankets or a box or her own body.

But he can’t, so he meets Renee’s gaze head-on.

“You’re a bloodbender.”

“Yes.”

“What are you doing _here?”_

Blood magic is one thing, and not so difficult a thing at that. Anyone decent at magic could pick it up, and all that makes it dangerous is that application usually focuses on dark magic. The spell Andrew taught him earlier could technically be counted as blood magic, and so could what it takes to unlock the Hatford grimoire.

Bloodbending is different. Bloodbending requires power, and the only thing limited about it is the number of people capable of it in the world. Its practitioners make it dangerous, and deadly, and it wasn’t Mary but the Butcher who taught him _kill the leech before it kills you_.

“Wymack likes to give second chances.”

 _Wymack is insane_. “So that’s what this,” Neil gestures at her skirt, her hair, “is, then? A disguise for what you are?”

Renee touches the gold chain at her neck, follows it to the tiny cross resting in the cradle of her collarbone. “It’s not a disguise. What I am, who I am, is who I choose to be. I choose to be someone with faith. With color. Someone who helps instead of hurts people.”

Neil swallows his accusations. But he can’t accept belief. No one is that good. No one can change from what they’ve been made. Renee will always be a bloodbender and Neil, no matter his promises, will always be a liar and a runner.

“I’m not hiding. I’m not lying to myself, or the world. I’m trying to do better, to make myself better.” Renee lifts the vial up to catch the light. “My gift may be violent, but I don’t have to be. Abby’s teaching me to be a healer. When I’ve learned all I can, I want to join the Peace Corps. There’s not such a taboo in Africa, and there are so many diseases I can stop in the blood.”

Neil closes his eyes. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Because you have deals with Wymack and Kevin, and when Andrew breaks your curse, I hope you believe you can stay,” she says. She slips off the counter. “I’m going to take a look at this.”

Neil listens as she walks away, tensing when her footsteps pause.

“One more thing. Are your parents still alive?”

His skin crawls. His nose burns with the stench of gasoline. He grips the switchblade. “No.”

Renee’s voice is soft. “Thank you. See you in the annex, Neil.”

He opens his eyes. She bounces off, leaving him with his heart pounding in his ears.

 

 

Faint ruffling noises rouse him from his sleep. They’re familiar enough he almost lets himself drift back off: the sounds of someone going through his bag in the dark. He used to wake up to his mother repacking in the middle of the night, either from some anxious itch she needed to scratch or because they needed to leave and she didn’t trust Neil’s sentimentality. He didn’t even have to fully wake to tell the difference. One was methodical, measured, and the other was brisk, efficient. This time it’s slow and deliberate.

He worms his head back under the pillow. He’d gone to bed early, and the light coming through the windows was still too bright, even for someone who slept in cars in broad daylight as often as motel beds at night. Mary would have blacked out the windows before ever touching the mattress, but Neil’s foot didn’t want to put in any more work today.

There’s a clunk as some object from the bag is placed on the floor, probably the mortar and pestle. He muffles the urge to tell her _Be paranoid and quiet, Mom._

Neil jolts upright, flinging his pillow at the intruder as he goes for his switchblade. Mary is gone.

It’s only been a few hours since he fell asleep. The horizon is still molten, the window panes glowing with the sunset. The dusky light burnishes the intruder’s hair gold.

“Andrew.” Neil nearly lowers his blade, but then he registers the treasure trove spread around Andrew’s feet: all the damning evidence of everything he’s ever tried to hide.

 _Kill him and run,_ Mary’s voice hisses in his ear, and he’s already shifting his stance before he even comes to a decision, because until now there never was one.

Andrew finally lifts his head. He’s holding Neil’s pillow in his lap, and the oblong lump of the thing seems to fit with the overall softer picture Andrew and the light paint together. He’s missing his sharpest edges: the setting sun smoothes his rigid lines into curves. He traded his skinny jeans of this morning for charcoal sweatpants, his solid black t-shirt for a bulky orange hoodie, his boots for sock feet. (Neil notes this last detail with satisfaction. If they’re both without shoes, then they’re on equal footing.) Whatever Andrew had done with the rest of the day managed to erase most of the harsh exhaustion from his face.

“Are you ever going to stop playing with that toothpick?”

It’s not the accusation he expected. His shoulders sag with relief. Andrew pats the closest clear space of floor. He stows the blade and sits, picking up the nearest item plundered from his duffel. Another little invisibility charm, shaped like a Chinese finger trap. He can’t remember where he got it, but he knows why he hasn’t used it yet. Unlike the charm he’d used back in Millport, this one doesn’t require an incantation to activate it. Instead you have to actually lock your fingers in it, and it only works as long as they stay that way. Too often immobility is something Neil can’t afford. He sets the trap down.

“The bag’s supposed to be coded to my magic,” Neil says. His, and Mary’s.

“You realize my job is dismantling magic,” Andrew deadpans. He nudges the bag with his toe. “It was disgustingly easy.”

Spells with holes usually are too easy to tear apart. Mary’s access is a hole Neil hasn’t had the strength to fill, and he supposes now he won’t have to.

He tugs the bag closer, checking to see what hadn’t warranted enough interest for Andrew to examine. A few components, sachets, and his spare clothes, unsurprisingly. He digs under a wad of jeans and his fingers brush cracked leather. He shoves aside the jeans, revealing the grimoire, intact and untouched.

Andrew wouldn’t have been able to read it anyway, but the fact he hadn’t tried soothes something in Neil’s chest. Some specific worry he hadn’t even realized he had.

Soothes it until the point of a blade pressing against his ribs sends it ratcheting sky high.

“Little runaway,” Andrew croons. “Do you think I’m stupid, or are you just not as smart as you think you are?”

Neil still can’t help but think this is the softest he’s seen Andrew, even with Andrew’s knife a breath away from skewering him. The veins of gold in his eyes shine.

“Neither?” Neil guesses, glancing down at Andrew’s arm. His sleeve’s rolled up, exposing the black armband encasing his forearm.

Andrew tuts. “Another lie. How sad. Try again.”

“How about you try explaining why you came creeping while I was sleeping?” Neil shoots back.

Andrew applies more pressure. Neil winces and sucks in his stomach. “You’re not in a position to be arguing.”

“Aren’t I?” Neil’s thoughts race. He leans toward Andrew. The knife tears through his shirt, cold metal lodged firmly against his skin now. “You want something from me, or else I would be dead already. You would have killed me instead of digging through my bag and bothering with banter.”

Andrew’s jaw clenches. “You overestimate your worth.”

“And you underestimate me.”

Neil taps the barrel of Mary’s gun against Andrew’s sternum.

Andrew smiles. “If you think shooting me will stop me from gutting you—”

“Mutually assured destruction,” Neil says. “Unless you’d like to talk, instead.”

“You like talking, don’t you?”

“Oh, but it won’t just be me talking. You, too.”

Andrew considers. Neil waits, rubbing his finger over the trigger. He’d forgotten he’d kept her gun until he saw it wrapped in dirty underwear next to the grimoire. She was so powerful; he’d never understood why she carried it. Why she bothered with ordinary weapons at all, when she had something so much grander at her disposal. He still doesn’t really understand, but he appreciates the effectiveness of a bullet or a blade better now.

Andrew finally jerks his chin in a stiff nod. He slides his knife back up his sleeve while Neil rests the gun in his lap.

“Answer for an answer,” Andrew proposes.

An even bargain, simple enough. Neil can agree to those terms.

“What are you doing here?” Neil asks.

“Kevin said you had a bag with you. I had to check it for any cursed implements.” Andrew shrugs. “Just covering my bases.”

“You had to come do this in secret in the middle of the night?”

Andrew shakes his head. “Nope. My turn. Did you lie when Renee asked you if your parents were alive?”

He carefully avoids inhaling through his nose. “No. They’re dead.” _I watched them die myself._

Andrew frowns. “That makes my job a lot harder.”

“Why?”

“A curse built on blood magic can only work if the caster is directly related to you. Or if they have your blood. Did you sell your blood to anyone, street rat?”

Neil rolls his eyes. _Street rat._ Far from original. “No, I never sold my blood.” Mary sold hers once, in a bargain to get them out of the country. As soon as she’d secured what she needed, she’d returned in the night and killed the vendor to steal it back.

Washing the blood off her hands, she’d explained, _Trading any pieces of ourselves is too dangerous. Too easy to track._

Neil had been eleven. He’d never questioned why some of her contacts called her _Bloody Mary_ after that.

Wait. “Can the blood be old?”

Andrew narrows his eyes. “Depends.”

Neil sighs. “We’re screwed then.”

He hikes up his shirt, exposing his lower abdomen. Most of the worst scars litter his back, and he’s not even lifting his shirt high enough to display the most gruesome on his front, but there’s plenty here for Andrew to get an idea of what he means by _screwed_.

Neil’s bled all over the world. Dozens of people tried to kill him, hurt him. Anyone could be the caster.

“Tell me you don’t _need_ the caster.”

“I don’t need the caster.”

“Why does it sound like there’s a _yet_ hanging off the end of your sentence?”

Andrew tosses his pillow back at him. “Because there is.”

Neil catches it as Andrew gets to his feet. He lobs it at Andrew’s face. “Hey. Wait.”

Andrew raises his eyebrows.

“You never answered one of my questions. Why’d you come do this _now?_ Why not wait till tomorrow?”

“I don’t trust you.”

Neil suppresses the insane urge to grin. “Is there a _yet_ there too?”

Andrew tucks the pillow under his arm and gives Neil a long look. “Come to Columbia with us Friday night if you want a _yet_.”

“What’s in Columbia?”

Andrew turns toward the stairs. “I’m not giving out anymore answers for free.”

Neil grunts. He glances at the mess Andrew’s left behind on the floor. He can pick it up tomorrow. He clambers up off the flower and limps back to bed.

“Hey! You stole my pillow!”

 

 

The dawning sun wakes him early again. The apartment’s little kitchenette is barren except for a sack of semi-stale bagels, and by the time the water heats up in the shower Neil’s already done, but the charm of first ownership has yet to leave and Neil decides it’s the greatest place he’s ever lived in.

He wanders downstairs nibbling on a bagel. His foot’s healed enough from Abby’s wonder herbs that he forgoes the crutches, though he almost wishes he’d played that injury up for another day when Kevin barrages him with agility drills the second he steps into the workroom. His little homemade arena in the annex has its own dimensional magic, expanding to an impossible size when Kevin drags him in. For the first five minutes, it’s a marvel, and then for the next eighty-five, it’s a nightmare.

Kevin is relentless.

He promises Neil won’t touch the real track until Kevin approves of his performance here, which Neil takes to mean he won’t ever see the arena again, as he’s as likely to earn Kevin’s approval as he is to separate Andrew from his knives.

Kevin reluctantly releases him after an hour and a half, but the reprieve is short-lived when Andrew closes his book and starts drawing circles for another session. This session is slightly more successful than the first, though not by much. No sludge tries to drown Neil, but Andrew doesn’t break his curse either. He just scuffs through the circle and returns to his books without a word.

The rest of the week passes by the same way as his days develop a formula: sessions with Kevin, sessions with Andrew, more sessions with Kevin, a checkup with Abby. He learns how to avoid attracting the attention of whoever’s on shift and narrowly escapes being dragged on a shopping spree with Allison. Wymack stocks the kitchen for him on Wednesday, but most nights they end up splitting a pizza in his office as Wymack curses at his paperwork and Neil studies stats of teams from other arenas.

He meets Matt Boyd in the back room on Thursday, and he’s just the right degree of friendly that by the time his break ends Neil feels better rather than exhausted or defensive. Matt works again on Friday; Neil runs into him during his lunch break, which Matt spends the remaining duration of regaling Neil with countless stories of stupid shit he or his friends have done. Neil surprises himself by how much he genuinely laughs. Matt’s easy to talk to, easy to trust—as easy as trust can be for someone like Neil. He feels familiar after two measly conversations in just as many days, like he’s someone Neil’s known for years, without the baggage of anyone he actually has known that long.

Neil slips into the routine, letting it carry him along until he’s leaving the annex Friday evening and Renee waves him over to her station.

She’s got slides of blood under a microscope, and Neil assumes she wants to show him something regarding the sample she took from him. Instead she peels off her gloves and pats the bench. Neil debates the merits of standing, weighs them against the soreness of his legs post the latest Kevin-workout. He sits.

“Hello, Neil,” she says, smiling. “How has your week been?”

“It’s been fine,” he says. “Long.”

She nods. “It often feels that way when we’re waiting for something.”

“And when we dread it, there’s never enough time,” Neil mutters.

Renee touches his shoulder. “Have faith in Andrew. There’s still time, and I’ve never seen a curse he couldn’t break before it was too late.”

Neil had actually been thinking about the Blindfold Meditation, the newest addition to Kevin’s schedule of exercises. While perching blindfolded on a boulder, Neil’s apparently supposed to _intuit_ how the landscape (including the boulder) is about to change and try to kill him. Unless he feels the vibrations through the rock with perfect precision, Neil has no idea how Kevin expects him to do this without using magic. So far all he’s managed is to get his ass kicked, and Neil knows it’s on Monday’s rotation.

Renee has a point with the curse, though. It’s been a week with no discernible (to Neil) progress. Andrew had looked more haggard than ever when he resurfaced from the trance this morning.

The curse hasn’t gotten any worse, so Neil hasn’t really worried. He’s got the upcoming tournament to prepare for, after all.

“Andrew will figure it out,” Neil says. Renee’s smile brightens, as if his agreement speaks of some deep, significant confidence in Andrew that she’s proud of.

In reality, Andrew hasn’t even spoken to him since that night in the apartment. They have their deal, and they conduct their business, and then they go their separate ways. Neil catches Andrew staring at him sometimes, a heavy stare Neil feels like a hand between his shoulder blades. Most of the time when this happens Andrew disappears angrily for a smoke break. But sometimes he doesn’t. Sometimes he stays, and Neil stares back, and they clutter the air with all the unasked questions and ungiven answers they won’t voice until there’s no oxygen left to breathe.

Renee squeezes his shoulder. “I’m glad you’re adjusting. Anyway, what I really wanted to say was good luck tonight.”

“Good luck?” Neil repeats.

“You’re going to Columbia tonight, aren’t you?” she asks.

 _Columbia._ He’d forgotten. _His yet._

“Oh, yeah, right,” Neil stammers. “Columbia. I am going. Are they still going?”

Andrew _had_ looked rough this morning.

“According to Andrew, yes.” Renee eyes his shorts, his tank top. She suggests, kindly, “I’m no Allison, but you might want to go change.”

Neil scrambles off the bench, in case Allison’s name might summon her forth. “Right. Bye, Renee.”

“Bye, Neil!” she calls after him as he bolts out of the annex.

He takes the stairs two at a time, running up the short flight through the burning in his thighs. He doesn’t have anything much better than jeans and a t-shirt to wear, but he should at least wash off the sweat and grime.

Five minutes later he wraps a towel around his waist and pads out from behind the metal wall. He freezes after his second step.

There’s a plastic bag sitting on his bed where there was nothing but his rumpled sheet before.

He approaches cautiously, half-expecting Andrew to jump out from behind a stack of books as soon as he lets his guard down. Inside the bag are new clothes: a shirt, pants, and boots, all tight and as dark as his black hair. It’s typical of Andrew, but distinctly different than the baggy, plain look Mary enforced. It’s not something Neil would pick for himself, either, but he doesn’t have another option.

He wriggles into them, then hurries downstairs. It’s past closing time, but Allison is still behind the counter, arguing with another one of the employees Neil’s seen over the last week. Their argument dissolves as soon as Neil thunders down the stairs, both of them lighting up at the sight of him. Allison, with rage, and the other guy, with delight.

“You let _Minyard_ make you over before _me?”_ she shrieks.

“Actually, _I_ picked his outfit,” the guy boasts. “Doesn’t he look great?”

“If he’s going to a punk funeral, maybe,” scoffs Allison.

Neil frowns at the guy. “I’ve never met you.”

He practically falls over the counter leaning across to offer Neil his hand. “I’m Nicky! I’ve been dying to get to know you ever since Wymack brought you in, but Andrew’s too stingy when something’s new.”

“If I had introduced you to Neil, he would have took off and no promise could have slowed him down,” Andrew remarks, emerging from the back room with Renee. Nicky jumps, whirling around to face him, but Andrew pays him no attention, instead raking his eyes over Neil. “Decent,” he acknowledges.

Nicky gawks as if in outrage. Allison rolls her eyes.

“You may get him tonight, Minyard, but he’s mine next,” she claims. She slinks out from behind the counter, ignoring Andrew’s dismissive reply. Allison wraps her arms around Renee’s waist and presses her lips to Renee’s neck. “And you’re mine now.”

Renee smiles, lacing her fingers with Allison’s against her stomach.

Andrew bats Nicky on the back of the head to hush his cooing, tugging him toward the front door by his curls. Neil guesses that’s his exit too. He waves an awkward goodbye to a distracted Renee and Allison and follows Andrew and Nicky outside. A sleek black car is parked at the curb, and half its doors open to greet them. Kevin climbs out from the passenger seat, which. Okay. He can’t see Kevin attending any event unrelated to the Games at this point, but he also can’t see Andrew participating in them, either, which leaves him even more confused as to what they’re going to be doing in Columbia. Neil just hopes Kevin won’t force him to do arm curls in the backseat for the whole ride.

Then the back passenger side door opens, and a blond head pops up, and it’s another stranger—

A stranger wearing Andrew’s face.

Neil glances at the Andrew still standing beside Nicky, wearing a low-cut black tank top, as opposed to the one by the car in a button-up. Neil drags his eyes from the hint of that Andrew’s chest to his arms. Black bands. None on the other one. This is the real Andrew, then.

Neil can shift to any animal he chooses, be anything he wants, but he can only wear his own human skin. Those who can truly mimic the face of another are a different breed of magic entirely. Unpredictable. Dangerous. Slippery.

One had tried to kill the Butcher once. They’d failed, but they’d escaped with their life, which was more than could be said for anyone else who’d made an attempt. No one had ever gotten so close, and no one got so close again.

(This was the catalyst for the Butcher’s decision that no shifters could be trusted. Not even the ones living in his own house.)

Neil shudders and shifts closer to Nicky. He can’t smell any mock orange, crucial for any strong or complex glamour, so this person must be the real deal.

He looks to Andrew. _Why isn’t he pulling any knives?_

Between them, Nicky’s pouting. “Do I have to drive? I want to pregame!”

“I’m not cleaning your vomit off the upholstery, so you’re not pregaming,” denies the imposter. He spares Neil a single disinterested glance, then slides into the passenger seat Kevin vacated.

Andrew slaps a set of car keys into Nicky’s palm and crawls into the backseat.

_What is going on?_

“Come on, Neil,” Kevin urges. Numbly, Neil acquiesces, and Kevin folds himself in after him.

“Safety first!” trills Nicky. “Seatbelts, everybody!”

The imposter mumbles something about car accidents that prompts Nicky to jack up the volume of the radio.

On Neil’s left, Andrew tips his head against the window and instantly falls asleep.

Neil tries not to beat his head against the center console directly in front of him. _What. Is. Going. On._

He leans into Kevin. “What are we doing?” he whispers.

“‘Going to Colombia’ is all I can tell you—” Kevin starts.

“No, what are we doing _with them?”_ Neil interrupts, subtly inclining his head to the front.

Kevin blinks. “Nicky and Aaron? They always come. It’s, like, a group thing.”

Neil’s either going to brain Kevin or brain himself. “Who are they?”

Some of the confusion clears from Kevin’s expression. “Oh. Nicky is Andrew’s cousin and Aaron’s his brother.”

_Andrew has a brother? Andrew’s brother is a face changer? Andrew lets his brother get away with stealing his face?_

“Why does Aaron have Andrew’s face?” Neil asks lowly. Maybe it’s an inside joke, a running gag.

Kevin twists to serve Neil with the full force of his _are you really that big of an idiot_ stare. “Because they’re identical twins?” he enunciates slowly.

Twins.

Oh.

Kevin shakes his head. Neil sits back and contemplates why he wanted to go on this trip in the first place.

 

 

Andrew wakes up as Nicky pulls over to the curb down a block from a club pulsating with neon light and electronic dance music. The sign above reads EDEN’S TWILIGHT in loopy cursive letters. Nicky turns to Neil with a giddy smile, reaching out to drag him along. Andrew slides smoothly between them, shooting Nicky a look that sends him scampering ahead with Aaron, who hadn’t bothered to wait for the rest of them. Andrew loiters around the car, so Kevin loiters, so Neil loiters with them.

Neil’s not really sure what Andrew’s doing. He’d taken a swig from a silver flask before they got out of the car. Now he’s propped against the hood, motionless, his eyes fixed on the asphalt of the road. Neil glances at Kevin, whose attention flickers between Andrew and whatever Andrew’s staring at. Kevin doesn’t appear concerned. No, he looks . . . anticipatory?

Neil peers at the ground again, even though it’s still too dark for him to make out anything significant. Maybe a few cigarette butts, long since stubbed out. They’d match the smoke puffing from the club Nicky and Aaron entered, white clouds that bloom against the riot of blues and purples and yellows that smears the night. Neil almost looks away, and then movement catches his eye. A faint flutter. A leaf, limp and gutter-wet, bobbing in the air as if lifted by the breeze.

Levitated, by Andrew.

The leaf sinks, and the moment breaks. Andrew pushes off the car and heads for the club. Kevin automatically falls in step. Andrew hooks his fingers in Neil’s elbow when he means to drop behind.

“Stay with me tonight,” Andrew says. “We’re getting curse supplies.”

Neil eyes the colorful lights, bright and lingering on his eyelids like the sun when he averts his gaze. The concrete sidewalk vibrates beneath his feet with the heavy bass, and the walls of the building shake with it. He nods. Andrew curls his fingers in Neil’s sleeve and keeps hold of him. It’s a little awkward, walking that way, but Neil’s glad of it a minute later when they push inside the club and hit a wall of bodies.

He’d thought it was a lot just looking at the facade. Inside everything is cranked to the max. The music, the lights, the heat. It’d begun to cool outside, as much as summer nights ever cooled, but here it’s a furnace. Sweat runs down Neil’s back. He feels his shirt growing damp, feels Andrew’s fingers slipping as he carves a path through the crowd with his elbows.

Then Andrew shifts his grip, wrapping his fingers around Neil’s arm instead of holding onto his shirt. He pulls, and Neil stumbles free, and it’s suddenly much easier to move with this new momentum. Kevin, latched on to his shoulders, follows so close he kicks Neil’s heels almost every other step. They forge on. Neil doesn’t know what they’re looking for, Nicky or Aaron or just a pocket away from the crowd, and it’s too loud to try to ask. His mind’s too full of sensation to want to. Andrew’s fingertips burn around his arm like five welding torches binding them, skin to skin, as if the flimsy cloth isn’t even there.

It feels like the _yet_ he was promised. It feels like magic bubbling up under the surface to sear through his veins, like his muscles when he shifts after a long run. Oh, how he _misses_ it, and how is he finding it _here_ —

He’s so caught up in the feeling that running into the ward shocks him like an electrical socket.

Kevin swears behind him, catching him when his body stiffens up with no balance. He flinches as he passes through the ward himself, but he doesn’t hesitate. He picks Neil up and continues on.

Neil barely registers that Kevin is carrying him by his armpits, as one would a baby or a kitten or a dog one is uncomfortable with and trying to hand off. His skin tingles, not just from the shock but from the sudden rush of magic soaking the entire room. Strong magic. Intoxicating magic. Strange, foreign magic, like traveling and seeing different constellations beside the same moon.

He’s felt this before. He knows it. When? Where?

He tips his head back, a stream of laughter trickling from his throat. He’s drunk and sleepy and invigorated all at once, grinning even as his eyes well with tears. They spill in rivers down his cheeks. A butterfly, its wings delicate shavings of moonlight and silver, alights upon his nose to drink them up. Its antennae brush his eyelashes. He blinks, and it takes flight, not far, landing among the curls on Andrew’s head.

_A butterfly. A glade. Grass between his toes. Giggles and sharp-toothed smiles. Sad sad sad when he had to go._

The memories splash sobriety and cold water over him. Andrew still has a grip on his upper arm, dragging him and Kevin along. Kevin, who’s _carrying_ him. Neil twists free, stumbles, shakes off Kevin when he tries to steady him. For the first time, Andrew glances back, and Neil grabs his arm in the same place he holds Neil’s.

He’d be taken by faeries once, when he was little. Around three years old. He had no one to play with, so when they tickled him and created games, when they bundled him up in the night, he didn’t cry or scream or beg to go home. He never cried, not until the Butcher came for him, and he knew even then what that meant.

He’d gone back seven years later, seeking asylum with his mother. The Butcher wouldn’t hunt them there, not when he’d been promised a war if he ever trespassed on their lands again.

_“Mom, do you feel it? Do you feel it? There’s so much magic!”_

_“Yes, Abram, I feel it.”_

_“Mom, why is it always night here?”_

_“It’s not night. It’s twilight. It’s the inbetween time, when everything is magic and you can go anywhere.”_

_“Anywhere?”_

_She cradled his face, and it wasn’t hope in her eyes, not quite, but the barest belief that maybe, maybe they had a chance and fierce determination that that was all they needed. “Anywhere.”_

So many names and faces and places since then. Too many. Too much.

Andrew lets Neil hold onto him until they break from the crowd, ascending a slim, winding staircase to an upper level balcony. Nicky and Aaron have already claimed a table at the far end and decorated it with dozens of shot glasses. Kevin makes a beeline for it, but Andrew backs Neil up against the rail behind a throng of tipsy nymphs.

“Eden’s Twilight. I get it now,” Neil half-shouts. “We’re in Faerie Land, the land of twilight.”

Andrew pitches his voice low. “Is that going to be a problem for you?” He hasn’t taken his hand off Neil’s arm. His palm is a burning point of focus.

Neil tells him, “Not if you’re here.”

Andrew scrutinizes Neil a moment longer, then tugs him toward the table. “Come on. They’re here for you.”

“I thought they were here to get drunk,” Neil retorts.

Andrew’s mouth twitches. “That’s just Kevin.”

And it is just Kevin. When they reach the table, Nicky bounds out of his chair to meet them, flushed but clear-eyed. Aaron’s sipping a water bottle, stacking the empty glasses after Kevin downs them. Nicky ushers them into the remaining two chairs, then flicks his fingers. A bubble folds around their table, instantly muffling the club’s noise.

“There we go!” Nicky announces. “It’s no fun hearing it unless you’re down there in it.”

“Why aren’t you?” Neil asks.

Nicky winks at him. “Maybe we can go down together later.”

“Keep it in your pants, Nicky,” Aaron groans.

Nicky pouts. “I’m—”

“Did you get it?” Andrew interrupts.

Aaron plonks a giant chunk of crystal on the table in answer. “Big enough?”

Andrew glances at Neil. “For now.” He turns to Nicky.

Nicky pries a small plastic bag out of the pocket of his leather pants and deposits it next to the crystal. Aaron opens it and sniffs the green sprigs inside. He nods at Andrew.

“Is that it? Is that what you need to break the curse?” Neil questions.

“We’ll see. Aaron?” Andrew prompts.

Aaron doesn’t move. “I want an hour tomorrow.”

Nicky sucks in his breath. Kevin chokes on a shot. “Aaron—” they both start.

“An hour tomorrow,” Aaron repeats, “or this doesn’t happen tonight.”

Andrew’s face is blank. Aaron’s is tight. They have the same face, but their anger looks so different.

Neil bites his tongue. He could intervene, say _I can survive one more night,_ but this isn’t about him, not really. He’s just a casualty. A hostage in negotiation.

Andrew says, “You can have ten minutes.”

Kevin slips off his chair.

“Deal,” Aaron agrees.

He fishes the herbs out of the bag and rolls them between his hands before crushing them on the table with the bottom of a shot glass. He holds out his hand. Andrew offers one of his knives, which Aaron uses to scrape everything into another empty glass. When he’s finished, Kevin dumps another shot into it, and then Andrew nestles the glass between his hands and _blows fire._

Neil’s the only one who jumps.

When the herb water starts bubbling, Andrew returns it to his brother. Aaron rests his chin on the table, putting his mouth level with the glass. He strokes one finger down the side of it. _“Ferment.”_

Then, something else, too soft for Neil to hear.

Aaron straightens. “It’s ready.”

They all swivel to stare at Neil.

“We’re doing this _here?”_ He gawks at Andrew. “What about all your paint and circles?”

Aaron snorts. Neil ignores him in favor of incredulity.

“Drink it,” Andrew says. “Trust is a circle, Neil.”

Damn it.

He reaches for the shot glass and knocks it back.

Kevin winces. “Don’t break him, Andrew. He has potential.”

That . . . doesn’t make sense. Why would Andrew break _him_ —

It hits him quickly. Not understanding. The truth serum Aaron cooked up right in front of him.

Faerie Land. Where everything is magic, including its flora and fauna. Where everything reflects its people, the Fair Folk who can’t tell lies.

 _Tell the truth,_ the serum coaxes. _What do you have to hide?_

_A lot._

_The truth will set you free,_ it soothes.

His mother’s voice rises above the serum. _The truth will_ kill _you._

“Neil,” Andrew sings, “look at me, Neil. I have some questions for you.”

“Don’t fight it, Neil,” Nicky murmurs. “It hurts less that way.”

Andrew drags him closer by the rungs of his chair. “Who sent you here?”

The serum slithers through his mind and then rips the answer out of him. He gasps. “Leona. Hernandez.”

Surprise flashes across Andrew’s face for the briefest second. “Who are you running from?”

Grief rolls and aches like the tide in his chest. His nose burns with gasoline and smoke. He closes his eyes, trying to picture the last time they were together before Seattle, what they’d been doing, but instead he’s at the beach. Black sand and ash. _They’d been so close._

“No one,” he rasps, like he’s still breathing smoke, like the truth is rending his throat. “He’s gone now.”

Andrew doesn’t waste time on pity or follow-ups. He pulls Kevin over, illuminates the tattoo on his cheekbone with a phone flashlight.

“Do you recognize this?” Andrew demands.

Neil starts to say _no, it’s just a blob_ , but the truth steals his breath and claims his vision. He sees the tattoo as it is, as it was, beneath the disfigurement of warped bonds. As he saw it years ago, on a young boy’s— _young Kevin’s_ —cheek, before they had to run.

Two black birds. Two ravens.

_“Do you recognize this?”_

“Yes. _Yes_.”

“Do you—”

Neil knows what questions come next, _do you know what it means, do you belong to them,_ because if Kevin’s fled the nest it means they’ve sent scouts and hounds after him, and they’ve been through this before, and if Neil gives the wrong answer, he’ll lose everything he almost had here. And Neil knows, with this truth serum, he can’t give anything but the wrong answer.

He can’t let himself say yes.

_This is gonna hurt._

He springs from his chair, and he could weep at the fluidity, at the relief he feels to finally, finally _shift._ He rakes his claws through Nicky’s bubble and leaps up to perch on the balcony railing. Neil pauses there, looks back to meet Andrew’s startled, furious eyes. He lets them all take him in, this form he chose.

A cat, the natural enemy of a bird.

He waits for Andrew to move, and then he plunges off the railing into the crowd below.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> talk to me @purearcticfire / @pipedream-truths


	3. collapsing star

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me while planning this fic: let's make up an imaginary alternative sport to this already imaginary alternative sport!  
> me now: why did I do that wh y

“I should have asked for more than two bottles of fire whiskey.”

“You can’t renegotiate now,” Wymack says, clicking angrily at his computer monitor.

Andrew props his feet on the desk, tipping his chair onto its back legs. “Oh, I know. I’ve already made him deals and promises too.”

Wymack flicks his foot with a pen. He jabs at a few more keys then grunts in disgust and faces Andrew fully.

Wymack clears his throat. “I haven’t heard the whole story, and honestly I don’t want to. But it sounds like your problem with Neil is personal, not business, not safety. So I _highly recommend_ you figure it out and get your shit together. Sooner rather than later.”

“He’s trouble.”

Wymack laughs. “Of course he is.”

“I don’t need another Kevin.” Andrew doesn’t know what he’s trying to do here. State the facts and hope Wymack comes to a different conclusion?

“I don’t think he’s like Kevin,” Wymack disagrees. “Turning into a cat is the biggest _fuck you_ to the Moriyamas and their bird shit that I can imagine. If he’s able to do that, they never got to him.”

“He’s still got history with them,” Andrew insists. He’d spent the drive back from Columbia dissecting that little chat—mainly the _little_ he’d gotten from it. One thing he’s sure of is a connection between Neil and the Moriyamas; his reaction to Kevin’s tattoo was proof enough.

“Probably,” Wymack concedes. “But you’ve already said it: you made him a deal.”

Neither of them are men who renege on their word. Wymack can’t take away his key to the annex any more than Andrew can let him die.

“So what if he’s a shifter? We work with what we’ve got, Andrew.”

The chair legs thump when they hit the floor. “How do I work with this?”

“Easy.” Wymack folds his hands and flutters them like wings. “Kevin.”

 

 

Andrew finds Neil sitting on a table in the annex. He’s folded up where Andrew usually works, paging through one of Andrew’s books, wearing his human skin instead of the form of the ginger cat from the club. Waiting to talk to Andrew, like Andrew’s been waiting to talk to him.

That gives him a strange feeling, different than when he shows up in the morning and Neil’s already downstairs in the back room. This feeling compels him to make Neil even more futile promises as much as it urges him to shove Neil off the table and end this blatant invasion of his space.

He grits his teeth. Clenches his fists. Forces the feeling down, down.

Neil looks up. He stiffens. “Andrew.”

Down, down.

(Save those for Bee.)

He lowers onto the bench a few feet from Neil. He doesn’t trust himself to sit on the table next to him yet. It’s too close.

“I’m not—” Neil tries. “I’m—I’m not theirs. I will _never_ be one of them.”

Such vehemence. Only fear or anger breeds intensity like that. Whatever history Neil has, it’s personal. Great. Vendettas make his job so much harder. Riko’s already a bitch to deal with as an abusive ex.

He could guess the answer, but he has to ask anyway. “Are they after you?”

“A long time ago. I was a different person then.” He turns that intensity on Andrew, as if the emphasis on his last words isn’t clue enough what he means by _different person_. As if Andrew hadn’t already known before Neil ever showed him his scars. If Andrew really cared about the name on Neil’s birth certificate he would have asked him when the truth serum still ensured he’d get an answer.

Andrew can’t decide if it’s naïveté or that special brand of Josten stupidity again. “You don’t think they’ll still want you? Someone of your skill?”

Andrew’s seen a thousand shifts. It can be painful, bones cracking, muscles ripping, brains squeezed by constricting skulls. It can be slow and graphic and grotesque, the stuff of horror sculptures, or it can be instantaneous and painless and blunt. A snap of the fingers or a blink of an eye and it’s done.

He’s never seen artistry like Neil’s. Shifting like breathing. Smooth and natural and kinetic.

If Kevin hadn’t been drinking, he probably would have been hysterical. As it was, his talons refused to become fingers again until he passed out halfway back to the car.

Kevin’s nursing a hangover now at the apartment. He’s gotten it down to a science at this point, but Andrew left him with Nicky and Aaron, not wanting a shadow for this conversation. Especially a shadow that would be particularly vocal regarding the proposition he’s about to make.

“I’ve seen footage of their races,” Neil dismisses. “I don’t shift like them.”

Andrew moves closer. “No, you don’t. And neither does Kevin now. Kevin can’t shift at all.”

Neil blanches. “At all?”

“Riko was throwing a fit and grabbed him while he was in the middle of shifting. Broke his hand, wing, whatever it was becoming. The pain—the savagery of it gave Kevin an opportunity to break their bond. So he came here. Abby tried to heal him, but he has to relearn control on his own.”

Shuddering, Neil asks, “Why are you telling me this?”

“You can teach him.”

_“What?”_

“Return the favor,” Andrew presses.

Neil grinds the heels of his hands into his eyes. “You’re insane.”

“Neil.”

He drops his hands. He snaps, “I thought you were going to tell me our deal was off. Give me a second to adjust.”

Ice so cold it burns freezes his insides. “A deal is a deal.”

He hates himself for the disappointment rising in his throat, the bitterness threatening to swallow him at Neil’s mere suggestion of anything less than absolute loyalty to his word. Why should he expect different from a runaway? A liar?

Relief loosens Neil’s shoulders. “Good.”

The ice thaws at the easy way Neil, unfolding his legs, lets his foot bump Andrew’s elbow, and Andrew hates Neil a little more for it.

“I need an answer, Josten.”

Neil pulls his foot back. “I think I gave you plenty of those last night.”

Andrew scoffs. “You gave me plenty of paranoia, maybe. Trouble. Confusion.”

Neil smirks. Andrew _hates_ it, hates its heat, remembering Neil grabbing his arm in the club and his open face, how touching him soothed the burn of the fire whiskey.

The smirk fades. “I don’t know how to teach shifting.”

Insecurity on Neil even remotely related to shifting, after what Andrew witnessed in the club—no. It just doesn’t fit. It shouldn’t be.

Andrew climbs onto the table. Thinks of everything he’s felt and read and been told. “It’s about connections, right? Spirit to body? Show him how to strengthen those,” he suggests.

Neil’s expression stutters, an indecisive surprise-suspicion-acceptance channel surf. He opens his mouth but cuts himself off before he speaks. He settles with a small, crooked curve of a smile.

“Yeah. Yeah, I can do that. Andrew?”

Down, down. “Don’t grow shy on me now.”

“Are you—never mind.”

“Last chance.”

“No, it’s nothing.”

Andrew slides off the table.

Neil scrambles off after him. “Wait, where are you going?”

A deal is a deal, so he has to go, even if he’d rather stay. “I owe Aaron ten minutes. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

He’s pushing open the annex door when Neil calls after him, “Andrew! Am I still at _yet?”_

Josten stupidity never fails. He says, “We’ll see how you do with Kevin,” and shuts the door on Neil’s reply.

 

 

Aaron gets his ten minutes and no more. They both leave worse than they were before.

Andrew hopes this failure will be it. He’ll stop trying. Andrew regrets ever letting him start in the first place.

As pissed as Aaron is, slamming car doors and kicking tree stumps and swearing under his breath the whole drive home when he isn’t railing at Andrew for not caring, he still collects his tools from the trunk and says, “I won’t stop.”

 

 

His back’s still sore from the rogue tree branch that whacked him during Aaron’s intervention Monday morning. He digs around in the bathroom cabinet for the jar of healing salve until he remembers Kevin liberally applying it to some bruises he got on that damn obstacle course. Nicky had taken about twenty pictures of the empty jar for his aesthetic Instagram account.

He could ask Aaron for more, but the absolute last thing he wants is to need his brother to fix his booboo.

Whatever. His back will heal on its own.

He shuffles into the kitchen, deflecting the plastic bottle Kevin foists on him. A protein shake, no doubt. Just for the attempt, he drowns his yogurt in sprinkles and cane sugar. Then he stops for donuts on the way to the shop. Kevin’s Tupperware creaks in his hands. Andrew wafts a few donuts at a redlight, shakes cinnamon into Kevin’s lap at a stop sign. It’s the croissant Andrew waggles under his nose that makes Kevin snap.

“Bread!” he growls. He rips the croissant from Andrew’s fingers, shoving half of it in his mouth. “Bread,” he moans, sinking into the seat. He jolts upright. “Bread!” He mashes the window controls, but Andrew seals it from the driver’s side before Kevin can chunk the remains into the street.

“I’m going to feel so bloated,” mourns Kevin, hugging his stack of chicken and rice meals forlornly.

Andrew rolls his eyes, but he’s for once grateful for Kevin’s training dramatics. He’s too distracted to notice the swiveling head of the crow on the telephone wire, tracking their car down the street. The front seat of a car is not a good place to trigger a panicked half-shift, nor is it a sight they can afford Riko exploiting upon a report.

He’ll tell Neil to postpone their session and work with Kevin first.

“Andrew,” Kevin says, “in your professional opinion—”

Andrew cranks up the radio.

Kevin shouts over it, “IS NEIL CLEAR TO PLAY IN THE NEXT TOURNAMENT?”

“WHAT DO I CARE?”

Kevin lowers the volume. “I want to debut him at Lughnasadh. He needs to start team practices this weekend at the latest.”

Andrew flicks on his turn signal. “Again, what do I care?”

“You are on the team, Andrew!”

“Only because it’s conditional to me having a job.”

Wymack has a rule: employees play; players work.

Kevin ignores this. “So is he good? You give him permission as his curse breaker?”

Andrew wonders if it was Abby or Wymack that enforced this conversation and his consent. Kevin never would have hesitated to play while cursed and likely assumed the same of his new protégé.

“I don’t care what he does. If he’s stupid enough to use magic at this point, that’s his own fault,” Andrew says. He neatly steals Reynolds’s usual parking spot in front of the building, then pops the locks. “Get out.”

Kevin frowns. “You say that like you aren’t coming with me.”

He tosses the shop keys at Kevin’s chest. “I’ll be there in a minute. Tell Neil to go ahead and start.”

The prospect of more training erases Kevin’s resistance. He climbs out of the car, leaning back in only to demand, “Train with us. Neil’s interesting to work with.”

Andrew bets he is. He leans over and yanks Kevin’s door shut. He waits until Kevin is safely inside the shop, the wards humming through the concrete, then reverses out of the space and heads down the street to the store on the corner. Neil _is_ interesting to work with. Reckless and unpredictable. Stupid in his risks.

Reynolds’s space is still empty when he gets back, but Renee’s bike is locked to the grate. He heads inside, sack in hand.

He steps lightly through the sleeping shop, the plants dozing and the books snoring still in the dusky light of the drawn shades. The fan blades spin in lazy circles overhead. It’s a slow start to what promises to be a long day, but at least he isn’t out in the late July heat.

The back room is empty, which almost surprises Andrew. Renee has her own space in the annex but rarely uses it, preferring the company of her circle and the spaces they can go, since Dan, Boyd, and Reynolds are all restricted to the back room and the front. Andrew knifes his way into the annex on autopilot, considering the possibility the curse could work in a similar way: just because it’s blood magic doesn’t mean it can’t also be something else. He spots Renee first, seated on the table beside her microscope, and the apparition second.

No, not an apparition. Andrew’s exorcised poltergeists before; he knows what a ghost looks like.

The figure turns to him, a silhouette made of a shifting prism of colors, a rainbow specter of light and energy. It floats over the shoulder of someone sitting cross-legged on the ground, their back to Andrew, slightly blurry through the flimsy film of a weak Arimathean shield. He recognizes the shoulders, the head of messy black hair. Neil. And the figure—oh, oh, _it’s Neil._

Andrew leans heavily on the door frame, something in his chest gone soft and quiet. Reverent. Awed.

Astral projection. Longing aches within him, an old grief for an old loss awoken. The closest he can get now to astral projecting is meditation with Bee, shallow as a puddle in comparison. He’d tried to forget how it felt, leave it to memory. He’d been a fool.

Andrew drinks Neil in, Neil in every bright, shimmering color, Neil’s _spirit_ , and knows if it was hard to forget the feeling, he’ll never forget the sight. The longer he looks, the more he sees, the more his knees tremble and his hands shake. Neil steps over the boundary circle, gliding toward Andrew. As he gets closer, his form starts to solidify, the colors melting into autumn red hair and shining golden eyes and a t-shirt the early gray of dawn, his mouth curling into that smirk that pisses Andrew off every time he sees it after a training session with Kevin. Colors shimmer across his skin as glowing blue tattoos wind around his arms, forking up his neck and cradling his eyes. It’s _otherworldly._ Even so, if Andrew hadn’t seen him a second before, he’d mistake Neil for corporeal, the only clue the way he hovers slightly above the earth.

Andrew couldn’t speak even if he had the words to.

“Any chance you could break my curse before I go back into my body?” Neil asks. “I have a feeling it’s going to hurt like a bitch.”

Andrew coughs, trying to clear his throat even though its emptiness is the exact problem. He grasps for a response, any response, and latches on to the most familiar, the easiest. “Like I told Kevin, if you’re stupid enough to use magic, you deserve the consequences.”

“You practically gave me the idea!” Neil protests. He adds sheepishly, “It took more than I expected. It should’ve been easier.”

Andrew folds his arms. “The curse is eating your magic. Did you really not expect that to make a difference?”

“I don’t know much about curse-breaking!”

“Obviously.” Andrew pushes off the door frame. The banter steadied him, more than he’d like to admit. “Shouldn’t you be helping Kevin?”

Neil shrugs, glancing over his shoulder. “Probably. He’s still meditating, and I wanted to talk to you.”

The soft thing in Andrew quakes. He presses his thumb against the hard outline of one of his knives and raises an eyebrow.

“While you couldn’t kick my ass,” Neil clarifies. “I wanted to make something clear.”

Andrew waves his arm. “You have the floor.”

Neil smirks again. Andrew rolls his eyes. Neil actually doesn’t have the floor, as he’s floating an inch above it.

Neil lets the joke live and die, then flattens his expression to stone. “If you need honesty from me again, ask me, and I will answer you however I can. No tricks. No serums.”

Andrew slices his bottom lip open on the edge of his grin. “I’m proud, little runaway. You should show your spine more often.”

Neil huffs. “Give me your word, Andrew.”

He’s pleased. He can’t hide that. Neil might not see it, but it’s plain as day in this damn grin on his face. Out of the corner of his eye he sees Renee smiling. Shit. He shouldn’t be doing this. He shouldn’t be letting himself feel this. He drags his thumb across the line of his mouth, forcibly erasing the smile. “No tricks. No serums. Just questions.”

The hardness fades from Neil’s face. “Alright, then. Are you sticking around?”

“Not all of us get to slack off, Josten. I have real work to do.”

“I thought I was your work,” Neil says.

Andrew bites down viciously on his tongue. _Yes, you are the work I’d love to do._

He says, “Bye, Neil.” He heads for the table, unsheathing one of his knives. Renee relocates nearby as he drives the blade into the wood, carving long trenches in its surface. Neil returns to the circle, murmuring to Kevin, who Andrew sees now sits opposite him, fists clenched on his thighs as he struggles to relax.

Andrew watches as golden light sputters over Kevin’s head. It takes another ten minutes for the light to strengthen enough to form the image of a person, cross-legged in the air as Kevin is, and an additional ten after that before Kevin’s scrunched face smooths out, and his eyes fall open, glowing with the same golden light as his avatar. Renee softly claps, and the avatar ducks his head as his spectral body blooms galaxies and nebulas.

Andrew glances at Neil. He mirrors Kevin’s pose above his physical body, occasionally flickering into a wolf or cat or prowling lynx, each marked with the strange blue tattoos sprawling over them.

Andrew drops his gaze to the table. He slams the knife down, burying his face in his arms.

Renee leans over his shoulder. “That looks like it says _NJ_ ,” she remarks cheerily.

“Leech,” he spits, muffled by his arms.

She ruthlessly plucks a hair from his head in response. “I can definitely find a use for this.”

Neil and Kevin work for the rest of the morning and well into the afternoon. Neil’s goal seems to be getting Kevin to successfully shift his avatar into another form, which is easier said than done. The farthest he’s gotten by lunch is transforming his arms into wings. By dinner he’s a hybrid man-bird, wings and taloned feet, hunched over like he’s trying to tuck his head under his feathers, shrunk to Neil’s size.

Meanwhile, Andrew reads. He chisels sigils in the giant pink crystal they’d picked up at Eden’s. He takes notes and later reviews his notes, and it’s only Renee gently tugging the notebook from his hands that stops him from ripping it in half or chunking it across the room or both.

It doesn’t make sense. Every curse is a knot, tangled strings for Andrew to snip or unravel. Sometimes with just one little tug, it comes apart. Other time it’s like untying his shoes. Aaron treats it like his garden, the threads of the curse weeds he needs to root out and pull. To Renee, curses are the circulatory systems she’s been navigating since childhood. Whatever the methodology, when you break a curse, it doesn’t get to restart from the last save point. That’s it. Eat some greens to flush out your system and you’re free to go. Except Andrew could untie the knots of this curse till his hands froze with arthritis, and he’d be no closer than he was at the start.

He’d tried amplifiers and conduits like the crystals and the runes he’d painted on Neil’s face. No effect. He’d tried invoking sacred words of banishment and healing. Nothing. Once he’d even performed an exorcism—started to, anyway. Neil had been laughing too hard so he’d given up.

_Rosemary. Helps with the fatigue._

Of course he was _fatigued_. He was exhausted. Wymack had been on babysitter duty for Kevin all week because after his morning session with Neil, Andrew had just enough energy left to stumble upstairs and crash on the collapsible cot newly installed in Wymack’s office. Curse-breaking has never been easy with his disadvantages, but it’s never drained him this much.

So he’d added rosemary to his tea. And he’d hated it, almost as much as he hates Neil and the way he still looks he wants to offer help sometimes.

He drinks it every day.

A shout rips Andrew from his frustration. He launches to his feet but stalls halfway off the bench, watching Kevin— _who’s actually shifting_. Kevin’s long arms grow feathered. He gives an experimental flap of his wings as the rest of his body compacts and shrinks, his nose hooking into a beak that he immediately uses to preen his chest feathers. The last part of Kevin to complete the shift is his eyes: green and wide and shiny with tears, then shiny and beady and small. Kevin tilts his head. They all wait, not daring to breathe, a room suspended.

The shift holds.

The raven makes a lap about the room, Neil whoops and turns into a small, white and gray bird (“A mockingbird,” Renee tells him) and Andrew sits down heavily. Kevin swoops past his face, close enough his wingtips brush across Andrew’s nose. He lets out a caw, making another lap, then alights on the crown of his own physical head.

Neil lands on human feet inside the circle. He folds his arms. “Alright, Kevin. Let’s see if you can shift back.”

Andrew rises.

Kevin the raven swivels his head toward Andrew. He flutters his wings, pacing on his own head, turning circles and mussing his hair. Agitated. Neil trills birdsong at him in a human voice and Kevin bursts into flight, fleeing to the rafters.

“FINISH WHAT YOU START, KEVIN!” Neil hollers. “THIS DRILL DOESN’T END UNTIL YOU DO!”

Andrew remembers the exact number of times he’s heard Kevin yell those same words at Neil during practice. 38. In one week. _He’s just been waiting for this all day_ , Andrew realizes. A chance for revenge.

Shit. He can’t climb up into the rafters. He’s going to have to climb up into the rafters.

“HOW ABOUT I TURN OFF THE LIGHTS? AT LEAST THEN I WON’T HAVE TO SEE YOUR INCOMPETENCE!”

Shuffling in the rafters. Then, “IF YOU’RE GOING TO BE PETTY, NEIL, WHY DON’T YOU JUST GO BACK TO THE _PETTY RACES?”_ A caw follows.

“SHIFTING JUST FOR A COMEBACK? IS THAT ALL YOU CAN DO? WHY DON’T YOU FLY DOWN HERE SO I CAN SHOW YOU JUST HOW _PETTY_ I AM!”

Andrew’s going to having a stroke.

“Kev—” he starts. He cuts himself off as Kevin hurtles down from the rafters, divebombing avatar Neil’s head, who’s still spewing smacktalk even as he’s getting his eyes pecked out.

Andrew turns to Renee. She shrugs. “They’re your boys.”

He waves his hand broadly. “I’ve made no deals regarding this.”

Kevin squawks indignantly as Neil grabs his tail feathers and bursts into human skin, frantically covering his butt with both hands. Neil laughs, pinching a single blue-black feather between his fingers. Then the most shocking development yet happens: Kevin laughs with him.

Maybe he already had the stroke? Maybe this is a dream cooked up by a coma? How can he figure out if he is in a coma? Dammit, if Aaron was going to be a real doctor instead of a tree spawn doctor, he would know this.

“Let’s call it there,” Neil suggests. Kevin nods.

They both crouch in front of their bodies, then in unison lay their palms over the top of their heads. The tattoos on Neil’s avatar flare, and then he’s gone, absorbed back into his body. Kevin’s avatar’s eyes glow gold before he disappears, his body’s eyes snapping open, the gold there fading as he blinks.

Kevin sways to the side, dazed. He throws an arm out to catch himself, but leans too much weight on it too soon and tips onto the floor. It’s almost as if in being out of his body for so long, Kevin forgot how to control it.

Andrew’s busy watching Kevin struggling to sit up. He doesn’t see Neil collapse, just hears the smack of his head against the floor. Hears Neil’s pained cry as black blood spills across the floor, more than a head injury would warrant.

_He did it to himself. It will pass._ Andrew knows these things are true. Knowing this doesn’t stop him from pressing as close as he can to the barrier or crouching to be in Neil’s line of sight.

“Neil,” Andrew calls.

Neil groans, hands clamped against his abdomen. Andrew can’t tell if it’s acknowledgement or an expression of pain.

“Neil, can you hear me?”

He grunts this time, dragging his head along the floor toward Andrew’s voice. Blood smears across his cheek. “You—you gon’ fix me, ‘Drew?”

Arimathean Circles are supposed to be soundproof. Andrew has never been so thankful for a shitty ward in his life.

“I think I’ll let you ride this one out,” Andrew says. He leans his forehead on the barrier, ripples spreading out from the point of contact. “Serves you right for that attitude.”

On the floor, Neil’s chest shudders with a noise halfway between a laugh and a groan. He forces a grin full of gray-stained teeth, any humor belied by his eyes, squeezed shut, leaking cloudy tears.

“You know you like—” Neil breaks off as he’s racked with another wave of pain. He curls in on himself, fresh blood gushing forth.

Andrew starts counting. Seconds. Minutes. He’s seen Neil go numb, but he’s never witnessed an episode like this before. Still, he doesn’t need to be a cursebreaker or even familiar with Neil’s situation to tell it shouldn’t be going on this long. Neil’s a reef in an ocean, just barely poking above the surface. Except submersion doesn’t matter to a reef. A reef can’t drown.

“Andrew,” Renee says, suddenly at his shoulder. A warning.

“Neil, move your head.”

He peels his eyes open, blinks. Shuts them again.

“Neil,” Andrew snaps, “move your damn head. Now!”

The slightest shift of his chin. Blood spurts out his nose and a scream strangles his throat. His face slides deeper into the pool of blood threatening to drown him.

Andrew bangs his head on the barrier. “Don’t move!”

Neil draws a shallow breath through parted lips, both his nostrils blocked by blood. His throat works to spit up the blood he sucked in with it.

_He’s going to drown._

Andrew’s lungs burn with phantom fire. _“Don’t move!”_

He spins toward Kevin. Renee takes up his post, coaching Neil through careful breaths. She curls her fingers against the barrier, drawing the blood little by little away from his face, as much as she safely can. Neil’s Circle, weak as it is, is strong in its priorities. Sound filters through like light through tissue, but the blood eludes Renee’s bending.

“Kevin! Break the Circle!”

And mobility eludes Kevin. His arms refuse cooperation, his legs jerk but give beneath him. He’s a foot away from the curve of Neil’s wonky oval, but he can’t move an inch to scuff it out. He’s newborn, helpless. Andrew fights the numbness, clinging to his fury. He can’t allow what the numbness will bring into flat clarity. The most effective way to solve the problem: let Neil drown, and the barrier will die with him.

_Promise promise promise,_ chants his burning lungs. His fury, his heart, his brain take up the refrain. His entire being, singing this song. And a whisper, from the deepest, buried part of him, stirred enough for _Fire._

He scrambles back over to Renew, abandoning Kevin. “Let me draw from you,” he demands. She offers him her hand wordlessly.

He yanks a knife out of his arm band, slashes both of their palms, and slaps them together. Sloppy, artless—but enough. Enough to reach out and latch on with senses half-dead, half-gone.

He pulls Renee’s magic from her torn flesh to his, a clumsy channel that slips around in his grasp like an electric eel. It sparks up his spine as he funnels it all into a summoning spell.

The flask of fire whiskey smacks into his outstretched hand.

He releases Renee’s eel, unscrewing the cap. He doesn’t pay attention to where it lands. It doesn’t matter. There’s about three quarters of fire whiskey left and he downs it all.

Wymack’s diluted fire roars through him. He coughs up smoke, belches flame. The barrier wavers like a mirage, and Andrew digs steaming fingers into its fabric, but oh, if only Neil was as shitty at magic as he is at self-preservation. The barrier resists, unyielding, unrelenting, solid and hard, so Andrew sets every drop of whiskey in him ablaze.

The barrier softens under a human inferno. He rips the rest of it away as the fire gutters out.

Everything gutters out.

Andrew hits his knees. Black splotches seep across his vision, or maybe that’s the puddles of blood suddenly close, close, close to his face. How’d he get down here? He’d been standing. He thinks.

_Owwww._ Sensation returns, its usual companions following suit. His stomach roils with sudden nausea; his head throbs against a skull made brittle. All of him feels brittle. Hollow. Shaken and emptied, a house stripped, left bare with skeleton walls for the wind to whistle through.

He lifts his head, sending it pounding harsh and heavy, levers himself up with arms that tremble. Colors and faces smear at the rush of movement, the black pooling across his vision. He closes his eyes and waits for the pounding to subside. When it’s bearable, he opens them again.

He sees swathes of black slithering across the floor. _Snakes_ is his first thought. _Renee_ is his second, following the blood with his eyes as it whisks over the floor into one of the mason jars Boyd uses for moonshine. The hem of her skirt is already stained, as are her fingertips, pressed to the pulse point in Neil’s neck. He keeps twitching and twisting under her fingers, the tendons pulled taut as he shakes and seizes. Andrew realizes the current mason jar is just one in a neat line of a dozen or more containers.

He’s still bleeding, but he’s breathing. For now.

Andrew moves slowly, his limbs protesting and aching the entire way. He swallows bile, clenching his jaw, his bones grinding on sandpaper as he crawls. The migraine only worsens, a hangover from Eden’s ratcheted up to ten. A punishment for abusing the whiskey.

Finally he reaches them, the mess that is Neil, totally lost to the pain, and Renee’s quiet work siphoning the blood away. She removes her fingers from his neck, offering the vigil up to Andrew. His headache doesn’t cease. It doesn’t abate in the slightest. Andrew clamps his mouth shut and tries not to breathe too deeply, or else he might retch all over Neil. But something does ease, a pressure behind his sternum. In the cage of his ribs his lungs expel smoke and the embers finally die.

Neil’s mouth is moving, forming the shapes of words without sound. Over and over, an endless litany. _Blood of years, blood of tears, blood of fears. Blood of years, blood of tears, blood of fears._

Andrew takes Neil’s wrist, finding his pulse there, skittering and flighty beneath his fingers. Then something else jumps under Andrew’s thumb, heat rising up through Neil’s blood slick skin. The hair on Andrew’s nape stands up. Neil’s magic hums against his palm.

It’s not like Renee’s magic, freely given but still resistant and foreign and wily. Neil’s magic greets him like a friend, with a whisper of _hello rock_ , for it knows him as the rock the curse breaks against. It doesn’t offer to heal his headache, and Andrew doesn’t ask, though the mutual awareness of it lingers between them—they both know Neil has no magic to spare.

_You should be hiding,_ Andrew chastises.

But Neil’s magic shares his stubbornness. Perhaps it is his stubbornness. _Come, come, come, rock,_ it invites. _Come now._

His pounding head hammering the badness of the idea just increases the appeal. No Circles, no sigils, no paint, no runes. No protection. Just Andrew, breaking curses and breaking himself in the process.

He tightens his hold on Neil’s wrist and tips

 

 

in.

He finds himself in an unfamiliar place. Soft wisps of magic float about him, wreathing him in glowing light and illuminating a path through the surrounding trees. It’s dusk in this grove, shadows blanketing the ground, the faintest hint of the sunset peeking through the trunks. He waits for his eyes to adjust to the wisps’ gentle light. He’s never been here before, in the grove or any place still uncorrupted by the curse. His runes prevent wayward sightseeing, but he doesn’t have his runes right now. He’s recklessly free.

The wisps, giggling, urge him on. He picks his way down their path in the near dark, comforted by their tendency to cluster around him whenever he stumbles over a root. He may walk for minutes, or it may be hours. Time slips through his fingers like it does during meditation with Bee. It’s quiet here. Tranquil. The wisps are his only companions through the trek, and their susurrating the only other sound.

They slow when the trees begin to thin, half their number drifting off. The rest continue to lead Andrew as the light grows ahead, the same fuzzy glow as the wisps, but brighter in its higher concentration. The closer they get, the less Andrew needs his escorts to see by, and soon they’re following him, a giggling pack at his back.

He expects the trees to break, to empty him out into some moonlit glade ringed by oak, a swarm of wisps at the center tending to some closely guarded representation of Neil’s soul. But the trees never break, though the light’s all around him now. He halts, trying to figure out where it’s coming from.

The wisps press against his back. Logic has no place here, in a haven built by magic and feeling. Silly rock. The lesson has always been one of perception.

_Open, open, trees, strings,_ they tell him. _Bonds, bonds, loom._

Rock doesn’t have the same knowing as their Neil, Rock isn’t theirs, and oh, Rock is so lonely, so much of him so far beyond reach. It takes him a long moment to intuit their meaning, long enough for the wisps to weep for his bereavement, and weep again at the fear their Neil will have a worse fate. But Rock is here, and Rock will keep Neil safe, so they do not fear or weep for long.

Rock—no, he’s _Andrew_. Andrew. He shakes his head, detangling his thoughts from the wisps’. It’s too easy to walk into them, like walking through spiderwebs.

Spiderwebs. He steps closer to a pair of trees, focusing this time not on the light emanating from the gap between them, but the gap itself. His vision shifts with his perspective, and there, clear as day, he sees them. Glimmering strings tying one tree to another, invisible as spider silk, ethereal as starlight. He twists his neck. The strings are everywhere, strung between branches, wrapped around trunks, brushing the ground like a tripwire. Every tree, connected. His mouth quirks. The grove is the loom the wisps spoke of, which makes the strings—

He reaches out, not plucking so much as just touching, and a tremor passes along the string before a shape bursts from it. A spectral rabbit, the same blue as Astral Neil’s tattoos. It bounds through the air, pausing to sniff at Andrew’s neck. He jerks and scrunches up his shoulders, and the rabbit twitches its ears before leaping back into the string. The bond. These are all Neil’s bonds to all the creatures he shifts into.

Andrew’s chest aches. There’s so many here. He knows if he were to look inside himself he’d find none. A wisp nudges his hand, and he can’t help the bitter smile pulling at his mouth. That was a pain he let go of a long time ago, but trust Neil to disrupt all the order Andrew’s made.

_Bonds,_ the wisps repeat.

“Yes,” Andrew agrees, eyes roving over them. He wonders if he could find the tiger bond.

_Stay, bonds,_ says the wisps. They grow louder, flocking to Andrew from all corners of the grove. _Bonds, stay, safe, skin, shift, shift, shift._

“What?” Andrew’s eyes blur as the wisps whip into a frenzy, chanting into his ears. “What does that mean?”

Then he feels it. The shiver down his spine, the prickle of his neck. He clenches his fist. The curse is coming.

It rolls in not as sludge this time, but as a thick cloud. The wisps scatter. Andrew braces himself. He should leave, this isn’t a fight he’s equipped for—he barely emerges unscathed from fighting the curse when he’s fresh and rested in the morning, wearing as much armor as he can. He glances at the strings of all Neil’s bonds. He doesn’t want Neil to lose these.

Many of the wisps escape, but the cloud catches a few, the slowest. One wisp narrowly manages to outmaneuver the cloud, zipping around a spiky tree that dissolves some of the vapor, and slams into Andrew at a speed that knocks him flat.

The air rushes out of his lungs. The wisp spares no second for apology, zooming off after its brethren, leaving Andrew to the cloud. He struggles to breathe, heaving great gasps that feel like they go nowhere. He finally gets a painful breath, shoving up onto his elbows as the cloud touches his feet.

The first thing anyone ever taught Andrew about curses was their danger. He knew the harm they caused personally, but the cursebreakers he’d seen summoned were always pillars of strength and power. It never occurred to him they were in just as much danger as the cursed. In dank cellars and dusty attics, grimy back alleys and graffitied street corners, on beer-stained tabletops and by flashlight past lights out, he’d learned. He’d learned that _curses that are hungry will eat you raw, they don’t care if you’re their host or not._ And _if you hurt it, be prepared for it to lash back tenfold_. He remembers thinking, _Maybe a curse isn’t so different from me, the world determined to break the both of us._

He expects the cloud to consume him the way it consumed Neil’s magic. He expects the cloud to rip him apart in vengeance for all his failed attempts to destroy its alternative form. But the cloud shies away from him instead, avoiding him entirely. Him and the bond trees, the cloud stopping short of making contact with any of the threads. Thunder rumbles within it, and then the cloud retreats, either giving up or finding a different way to pursue the wisps that fled into the trees.

None of the wisps are near, but he stills hears their whisper as soon as the cloud is out of sight, _Time, time, go, go._

 

 

Andrew takes some of the grove with him when he goes. He doesn’t mean to, but it’s one of the risks of traveling without protection, things latching onto you, and Andrew’s somehow appealing if not easy to stick to. He doesn’t necessarily get it, but Neil and Kevin are living proof it’s true.

He blinks most of the trees out of his vision, dragging his aching body upright into a sitting position. A few lingering leaves cling to his pants and shoulders. He tries brushing them off, but they stubbornly refuse to part with the fabric. Eventually he gives up, deciding to ignore them for now, and turns his attention outward to the annex. He catalogues the differences to the grove, just to make sure nothing but the leaves bled through. (Patches of sunlight on the floor—late afternoon, not dusk. No trees. No strings. No wisps. No prowling clouds.) The annex is the same as ever, except for a faint burnt stench hanging in the air.

His own words echo back to him. _Are you trying to stall?_ They were right then and they are right now. He steels himself and looks where he’s been avoiding.

His wrist, Andrew’s fingers a circle he can’t bring himself to break, not yet. (His pulse flutters against Andrew’s thumb.) Then past his wrist, up his blood-streaked arms, glancing over his shirt, pasted to his skin. His neck, splattered by dark splotches since dried and cracked. His hair, curling around his ears. His mouth. (He’d bitten through his bottom lip and the sight of it swollen and red—Andrew accidentally squeezes his wrist _look up look up_.) His nose. His eyes, closed, but roving beneath his lids.

Andrew’s glad Neil’s still in a trance for this. It feels _strange_ enough to look at him without Neil looking back. Strange with his ears still hissing with whispers that never resolve into words, with random spots on his back still warm from where the wisps pushed him forward. Strange with leaves on his shirt, leaves that were part of Neil, and parts of Andrew still tangled up in _ours_ and _not ours_ and _Rock_. He saw Neil’s bonds, Neil’s magic, and he was prepared to die defending them, which is all supposed to be his literal job. It shouldn’t feel like so much more than it is.

_It shouldn’t feel like this._

Like leaves in Neil’s hair. With his free hand he reaches up, plucks it by the stem. It doesn’t resist when Andrew removes it, cupping the leaf in his palm as he lowers it from Neil’s head. He lowers his eyes back to Neil’s just in time for them to open. Blue as the tattoos on his avatar.

Really, all his observation lasted seconds, a minute at most, made longer by the intensity of it, his body slowing everything down. On some level he knows this because Renee, or at the very least Kevin, wouldn’t have let him sit there and moon over Neil for much longer than that. But the seconds that follow Neil opening his eyes stretch infinitely, and Andrew loses concept of time.

Neil blinks. The blue doesn’t fade. Neil glances at Andrew’s fingers around his wrist, meets his gaze in question. Andrew loosens his grip, but Neil doesn’t break away. He slides his hand into Andrew’s instead, uses it to pull himself upright. The blue doesn’t fade, and even after he’s sitting up, slumped and dizzy, he doesn’t let go.

“Andrew?” Neil rasps.

The blue doesn’t fade, and it’s a truth Andrew never asked for and Neil doesn’t know he gave. All he cares is that the curse killed the glamour before Neil.

He tugs Neil closer by his hand and brings their foreheads together. Neil’s settles hard against his. He returns the squeeze Neil gives his hand. “That was a close one, idiot.”

Neil winces. “I know. I could feel it this time. Not just the pain, but my magic. Leaving.”

Andrew wonders how many wisps escaped. How much of Neil’s magic is left.

“It always felt like it would still be there when this happened before,” Neil says quietly. “Now I don’t know.”

Maybe this is the point where someone like his Nicky or Boyd would wrap him up in a hug. Rub his back and soothe him with reassurances. Someone capable of comfort that isn’t knives on his arms. But that isn’t Andrew, and this, a hand in his and their foreheads together, is as much as he can do. This, and a piece of hope it almost feels cruel to give. “I have a lead.”

Neil draws back, opening his eyes. Blue. “A new lead?”

Before Andrew can answer, Kevin barrels in, apparently finally capable of movement. He claps a hand on Neil’s shoulder and starts babbling on about risks and health while Neil rolls his eyes so hard he topples over. Andrew pushes to his feet when Kevin threatens his involvement, as if Andrew cares whether Neil debuts as a member of the team at the Lughnasadh tournament or not. He shoves his hand in his pocket and tells himself it doesn’t feel empty.

Renee, hovering nearby, offers him one of the washrags she’s holding. He assumes the other is for Neil, whenever Kevin gives up or she decides to intervene. He takes it.

She asks, “Are you going to call Bee?”

He works at the blood crusted in the lines of his palms. He needs to organize his thoughts. He definitely needs to call Bee to sort out these feelings. But he knows what Renee means, how diving in like that would have looked. Reckless. Dangerous. Like he was trying or he didn’t care if he got himself killed. And then how Aaron would interpret it: chasing the taste of magic no matter the cost. But it wasn’t about self-destruction or scratching the itch.

“I’ll let her know I’m coming in tomorrow,” Andrew says.

Renee nods. “I’m making you another pair of bands,” she tells him. “I’ll embroider them. For next time.”

Embroider them with sigils and runes. No easy task, and not normally her domain. “Reynolds been teaching you?”

Renee smiles slow and wide. “She’s definitely made me more dexterous.”

Andrew flings his rag at her face. She catches it out of the air, swatting his back as she follows him over to the work table. He shoves his tools and papers aside. One of his journals tumbles off the table’s edge as he climbs up. Renee joins him, legs folded beneath her.

Andrew disregards the mess strewn about him, a mess he’d spent days compiling. He drums his fingers on his knee. “Are you still willing to help?”

“Of course,” Renee replies.

“Okay, keep monitoring how much magic is left in Neil’s blood.”

He doesn’t know if they count as friends, but if they don’t, she’s the closest thing he has to one.  
Knowingly, she asks, “Is that all?”

Andrew says, “Tell me everything you know about necromancy.”

 

 

After the day he’s had, Andrew should have no problem falling asleep. His body aches. His head dully throbs. He took exactly as many steps as he needed to collapse on the cot in Wymack’s office, and his legs refuse to take any more. Hell, he even skipped both a shower in Neil’s shitty bathroom and the dinner Kevin tried to force down his throat because he was physically too tired to chew, much less stay standing for five minutes.

Yet he lies awake, staring into the dark, mind too busy to quiet. He can’t shut his brain off this time. It’s frustrating, to say the least. He’s always been able to just shut it down. He’s never been this _invested._ Never been this invested in anything, especially work. Work is work. He does his job, gets paid, and he doesn’t worry about the clients. He doesn’t fret or struggle or make them promises. He doesn’t set himself on fire to save them. He doesn’t hold their hands.

He remembers the warm weight of Neil’s hand in his, the rub of their slightly sticky skin together. Pressing his forehead to Neil’s like he was some kind of cat nuzzling for affection. He worms two of his fingers into the pocket of his jeans, touching the waxy leaf he’d excavated from Neil’s hair.

The magic. It had all been a side effect of some lingering connection, making them touchy-feely. Making it seem intimate. It wasn’t real.

It wasn’t real, so he shouldn’t waste time thinking about it. He shoves away what happened with Neil, trying to blank his mind so he can finally sleep. His mind spins to an adjacent topic instead, the one that had originally occupied his thoughts before he got distracted.

_Tell me everything you know about necromancy._

No. He doesn’t want to think about that either. He’s already been over everything Renee said a thousand times in his head.

With a sigh, he swings his legs over the edge of the cot. He pads out of Wymack’s office into the apartment, pausing to check that the chests of both bodies in the bed rise and fall regularly. Kevin insisted on cramming into the small space with Neil, claiming the floor was too hard on his back. As it is, Kevin has to curl in on himself to keep his feet from hanging off the end.

Andrew descends the stairs into the shop with the night as his company. The sleepy wards barely tickle as he moves through them, stealing some of Abby’s chamomile mixes from the tea display before heading to the back room for the electric kettle. He takes his cup with him to the annex. He forces himself to keep walking past his table, though he grabs the bag from this morning off the bench. It’d been completely forgotten in the chaos since. He carries it up to the roof with him and his tea, shouldering the door open as the warm night air washes over him.

The tea helps, or the power of suggestion does. Either way, his brain slows a little, enough for him to direct it elsewhere.

He scoots toward the edge. For the first time in a long time, he tries to recall how it felt to fly. Falling, he remembers clearly. Viscerally. But flying?

He wonders if he could now, if he still had his wings. If they’d be strong enough, if they ever healed. He leans over the edge, a breeze buffeting his back. Gravity tugs at him, his gut swooping with the sensation, and he fights against it for a long moment, his balance a faltering and constantly shifting battle. _Maybe this is a little what it’s like,_ he thinks, _maybe._ Finally he lets himself stumble back onto the roof. He sits down heavily, gravity’s pull snapping away.

“Andrew.”

He closes his eyes. Of course. He banishes Neil from his thoughts, and Neil appears in the flesh.

“Go to sleep,” Andrew orders. He tips his head back to find the few stars visible through the city’s light pollution and the glare of downtown. He hears Neil sit down nearby anyway.

“I can’t,” Neil says. “I feel like shit, but I can’t.”

_Join the club_. Andrew stays silent, teeth gritted.

“And,” Neil adds, “Kevin kept trying to cuddle with me.”

Andrew’s mouth quirks. Neil inches closer. He shifts away to maintain the distance between them. Throwing Neil a sidelong glance, he says, “I’m not going to cuddle with you.”

Neil snorts. “I know.”

They lapse into quiet stillness. Andrew compares the faint glimmers here to the constellations he’s seen elsewhere. Neil shifts into a variety of different nocturnal animals, but he refrains from moving more than the shift requires. Andrew mainly tries to ignore him, enough feelings about shifting stirred up for one night. He fishes his pack out of his hoodie pocket. Neil returns to his human skin as Andrew shakes out a cigarette.

He takes a drag, then lowers the stick from his lips. Neil plucks it from his fingers, holding it up to own face to inhale the smoke. Andrew rolls his eyes, shaking out another. Neil watches this time as he lights up, stuffing his lighter back in his pocket afterward.

“Wouldn’t it be easier to light it yourself?” Neil asks.

Andrew flicks ash at him. “What do you think I just did?”

“You know what I mean.”

Andrew turns to face Neil, eyebrows raised but expression otherwise blank.

Neil stares back at him, his cigarette smoldering between his fingers. Impatience tinges his expectancy with exasperation. “You’re really going to make me spell it out?” At Andrew’s lack of a response, he rolls his eyes and, with unnecessary dramatism, enunciates, “Wouldn’t it be easier to light it with magic?”

Oh. Neil doesn’t know. Andrew’s gut twists at the assumption. He hikes his shoulders up, fakes nonchalance with a shrug. Just to piss Neil off, in an act of pettiness, he says, “Yeah.”

“Then why don’t you?” Neil presses.

If not for the curse, Neil would probably be the type to rely on magic for everything. Classic street rat behavior, totally dependent on their only point of stability. Andrew’s not feeling very charitable towards this outlook tonight. “Some things you don’t need magic to do. Surely you’ve figured that out by now.”

Neil’s harsh grin cuts through the smoke curling between them. “I’d insult your skill as a cursebreaker necessitating that realization, but I don’t think you actually care about your job.”

A fair observation, though the reminder of Neil’s curse would sting for reasons other than his pride.

Neil continues, “I’m not getting a real answer without giving one, am I?”

Andrew had really been planning to piss Neil off enough that he’d go back inside. “Now you’re catching on.”

Neil stubs his cigarette out, grinds the butt beneath his shoe. “Fine, ask me.”

Andrew turns over questions in his head. He should ask something related to the curse, information he’ll need to explore this necromantic angle. Bloodlines, motive.

The breeze slides through his hair. It stirs the longer strands on Neil’s forehead. Neil rakes them back before they can impede his vision. The words fall from Andrew’s lips before he can overthink them. “The blue eyes. Your mother or your father?”

Neil stiffens, but he answers. “My father.”

“And the glamour? Your mother?” Andrew hazards.

“That’s an extra question,” says Neil.

“Not if I answered it myself,” Andrew disagrees. He’d been working off instinct, but Neil’s soft deflection had been a confirmation in itself. Truths piling up, he reaches for a missing piece. “One more. This one counts. Did your mother teach you to shift?”

Neil drops his eyes, and suddenly, he seems so very small. So very young. He says, “Yes,” and reaches for Andrew’s cigarette. Andrew lets him take it. He doesn’t light another this time, just watches Neil hunched over the stick as if in prayer. Neil’s hands don’t shake, but something within him does. Andrew can’t explain how he knows, but he knows.

Andrew gives Neil a moment and takes one for himself to think. Neil father’s blue eyes, kept hidden. His mother glamouring him, teaching him to shift, supplying him the tools of a runaway. His mother, also a shifter. Andrew remembers the dark cloud, avoiding Neil’s bonds entirely. Andrew remembers Neil’s words when they’d spoke about familial links and blood magic, _They’re dead._

And he remembers Renee’s.

_“I don’t know much about necromancy itself, but I know it’s death magic. And anytime you toy with the magic of life and death, it demands a balance.”_

_“A balance?”_

_“Equal energy.”_

_“What does that mean? No bullshit. Just say it. Say it, Renee.”_

_“Andrew. It means a life for a life.”_

Dead parents. Blood magic. The draining. The curse’s selectivity. How did he miss this? How did he not see what it all added up to?

“Okay, my turn,” Neil announces.

Andrew clenches his fists as his rage swells. If Neil had just mentioned his homicidal father when they started this, Andrew could have found a fix by now. They wouldn’t have _wasted_ so much time and blood. They wouldn’t be racing a clock with the time running out. Neil would be already safe, and Andrew wouldn’t be burning from the inside out with a promise—

Neil offers him the cigarette back. Andrew blinks, forces himself to calm down. They still have time. And Neil, like the rest of them, assumed what everyone did: the dead are gone. He relaxes his hands. It’s enough to quell the rage, if not dispel all the anger simmering in his gut. He takes the cigarette.

Neil asks, “Why don’t you use magic to light your cigarettes?”

Andrew smiles. It’s not a pleasant thing. “I don’t have any.”

Neil’s anger rises into the vacuum left vacant by Andrew’s. “Don’t lie,” he snaps. “You’re the one—” Abruptly he cuts his own sputtering off. Looks at Andrew, unmoving, smile faded at the accusation of dishonesty. Neil shakes his head. “You wouldn’t lie—”

Andrew perks up, just slightly. Belief. Unexpected.

“—but I saw you use magic. At the club. And I know it was you who broke the Circle,” Neil continues.

Andrew refuses to be impressed by basic observation. Neil doing something to save his own life instead of actively sabotaging it—that would impress him.

“Wymack’s fire whiskey. It’s what he pays me to take on cases like yours. Regular whiskey imbued with his magic. I drink it and channel the magic into whatever I want. Fire is easiest, obviously. Everything else is a little more difficult,” Andrew explains.

Neil frowns. “But you’re still a cursebreaker. Without magic.”

Andrew shrugs. “Anyone can be a cursebreaker.” Neil laughs at that. “Seriously. They’d just rather put other people in danger than themselves.”

That sobers Neil. He presses, “Isn’t it harder for you? More dangerous?”

“More dangerous,” Andrew confirms. “No harder. Easier, probably, or I wouldn’t be one of the best cursebreakers in the country.”

“The best?” Neil repeats, smirking.

He feels vaguely like Kevin, elevating himself this way, but it’s the truth, and he deals exclusively in the truth. He’s curious though. “I am the best. What did they tell you to convince you to come here if not that?”

“They said everyone was really friendly,” Neil deadpans. “You still owe me one question.”

Andrew props his chin on his knee.

Neil leans back on his hands. The intensity in his eyes belies his posture and light tone. “You said you have a new lead. Great. But do you believe you can break my curse? Really believe?”

“Looking for a solution elsewhere counts as running,” Andrew replies flatly.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Neil insists. “I’ll die here.”

Andrew’s response is swift and heavy. A hand on the back of Neil’s neck, thumb sliding to track his pulse. A promise. “I won’t let you die.”

Neil’s mouth pinches. They both know it’s not really an answer to his question, but it’s the only one Andrew will give. Andrew waits for his pulse to steady before drawing away and climbing to his feet. He’s halfway across the roof when Neil calls, “You left your bag.”

Andrew doesn’t stop. “It was going to be for you anyway. Maybe it will reassure you.”

Neil retorts, “I feel like this is you being vague just to be dramatic again.”

Andrew pauses at the stairwell. “Comes with the territory,” he decides, then disappears down the steps, leaving Neil’s reply for the wind and the stone to swallow.

 

-

 

“Don’t look at them,” Kevin hisses, steering Neil away from the stands.

“I wasn’t,” Neil denies as Kevin tows him in the opposite direction of the arena’s snack bar, back into the heavy behind-the-scenes bustle of a tournament in progress. He digs his heels in at the fork in the path leading to the administrative offices and the loading bay.

Kevin tugs impatiently at his arm. “Neil,” he snaps.

“I wasn’t looking at them,” Neil repeats.

“They were looking at you!” Kevin jerks him down the path. Neil wriggles out of his grip, dancing out of reach of Kevin’s longer arms.

“And? What are they going to do, curse me?” he challenges, spinning on his heel. Kevin groans. For some reason, Neil’s the only one who thinks his curse jokes are funny. Wymack calls it “death row humor,” and Nicky asks him if he was always so morbid or if it’s a recent development. Kevin follows him, so he continues, “I don’t care if the other team looks at me. They’re going to see me close up in a few hours anyway.”

The relay team events, the culmination and climax of the entire weekend, are always last on the tournament schedule. Tonight they begin as the sun sinks and conclude when night falls over the horizon. It’s in stark contrast to the petty races Neil’s used to, the noon-high sun hot enough to bake the ground and crown your brow with sweat before the gun even goes off. Kevin’s spent the past week trying to adjust Neil’s circadian rhythms, keeping him up all night so he’ll sleep through the day, conserve his energy for the evenings. It had been sort of working, but Neil’s body isn’t cooperating today. Too full of adrenaline for Race Day.

Kevin had been the one to relent, sick of Neil’s restless rummaging while he’d been trying to nap in Wymack’s office. Keyed up enough by his own nerves, he’d led the expedition toward the snack bar to drown himself in nacho cheese until he spotted the relay team from Breckenridge lounging in the stands.

Kevin catches up with him, shooting him a pointed look. “Not too close. You can’t let Gorilla catch you.”

Gorilla, Breckenridge’s only shifter, and their biggest threat in terms of both size and aggression. Wymack’s team all had established roles; Breckenridge put Gorilla wherever they needed him to crush someone. Usually that was Matt in the gladiator ring, but everyone agreed they’d target Neil sooner or later, especially once they realized what he could do.

Neil isn’t so convinced. He’s better at reading the shifting landscape after two more weeks of Kevin’s tutelage, but he still can’t willfully manipulate it the way Kevin so effortlessly does. Still, if there’s one thing he’s learned from everyone micromanaging his health and safety, it’s how much easier it is to just appease and move on.

“He won’t get near me,” Neil agrees.

“Are we talking about Gorilla?” Matt asks, falling into step on Neil’s other side.

“We’re talking about Neil staying away from the other team,” Kevin replies over Neil’s head.

Matt snorts. “That’s a no brainer, isn’t it?”

“Apparently not!” Kevin fumes. “His own survival is too boring for him.”

“Oh, well, if it’s boredom you’re trying to get away from,” Matt says to Neil, glancing unsubtly at Kevin, “come with me to watch Dan’s meet. It’s about to start.”

In his peripheral vision, Neil sees Kevin wrinkle his nose.

“Sounds great!” Neil picks up his pace. “Let’s go! Wouldn’t want to miss it!”

Kevin mutters something about hydration and stomps off, presumably back to Wymack’s. Laughing, Matt lopes after Neil, catching up in a few easy strides. He bumps Neil’s elbow to get his attention, then contorts his face in a scary imitation of Kevin’s scowl. Neil mimics Wymack’s stern no bullshit glare from the team meeting that morning. Matt guffaws, his laughter carrying them all the way to the stands on the opposite side of the arena, even going the long way to avoid passing the other team.

They find an empty section of bench near the bottom. Matt flags down a popcorn vender while they wait, who recognizes Matt as one of the home team despite the fact they aren’t dressed in their gear yet and gives him a tub for free. Shortly after, the announcers start listing the contestants over the loudspeaker. Different names garner different cheers. The crowd boos a guy from Breckenridge, shouts a custom chant for a local, and politely claps for some of the unaffiliated racers. When they call Dan’s name, Matt shoves buttery fingers in his mouth, and his shrill, piercing whistle rises above the roar from the crowd.

They cue up walkout music, the thundering bass vibrating through Neil’s legs, and it occurs to him he has no idea what he’s about to watch.

“Matt,” he calls, leaning close, “what kind of event is this?”

“Huh?” Matt leaps to his feet, craning so he can catch the second Dan walks through the gate. “Event? Horse racing!”

_“Horse racing?”_

Neil drops back onto the bench, interest felled. He can’t believe Dan, fierce and bold and _commanding_ everywhere she goes, would participate in something so boring. He tries to imagine her on the back of a pegasus, making weak circles around the paddock, but the image won’t compute.

He’ll still clap, but he can’t force himself to fake Matt’s exuberance when nothing about this excites him in the least.

Matt, however, has other plans for him. He yanks Neil back up, pressing close to the rail. “You’ll want to see this, trust me!”

Neil scoffs. “No offense to Dan, but what could be a big deal about a pony party?”

“I’m going to do you a favor and not tell Dan you said that,” Matt tells him. “Seriously, just watch, it’s not what you think. They’re about to come out.”

Neil watches. Down on the arena floor, the gate slides open. A hush falls over the crowd. Matt grips Neil’s arm. The dust stirs, and then explodes in great plumes in the air as the mounts burst out of the tunnel leading to the paddocks. The first few leading the charge are simple pegasus, plain coats and plainer riders, but before Neil can consider sitting back down a wave rips through the tunnel—saltwater, he smells the brine from the stands. Instead of washing out it churns and roils beneath the forms of a frilled hippocampus and a writhing kelpie. The kelpie snaps at the hippocampus, teeth inches from its flank, and the hippocampus rears up before its rider coaxes it into a lap about the arena instead, spectators’ screams trailing like sea foam in its wake.

Matt says something next to him but Neil doesn’t hear, halfway up the rail for a better view, hand clamped on Matt’s shoulder for balance as the surge of people rushing in for a photo jostle him. He ignores them all, too entranced, too shamelessly hooked to look away now and risk missing any of the scores of mythical horses pouring in. Steeds of air, steeds of fire, phantom steeds and astral steeds. Steeds with double heads, four heads, six-legged supposed descendants of Sleipnir. Iridescent twin horses with a singular horn sprouting from each of their heads.

The unicorns clear the gate, and the announcer bellows, “AND YOUR SOUTHEAST CHAMPION, HERE TO DEFEND HER TITLE—DAN WILDS WITH TEMPEST!”

Neil leans over the rail to catch a glimpse of Dan exiting the tunnel. He nearly misses her, looking for the bulk of a mount. She walks out of the tunnel on her own two feet, hands empty, alone. Projections floating in the air above the stands depict a closeup of her face. A shiver rolls down Neil’s spine at her grin.

The horses retreat to the edges of the arena, leaving Dan a clear path to the center, where she stands, fists clenched, eyes closed.

_She’s calling her horse,_ Neil thinks with relief. It’s just a teamwide penchant for dramatic entrances and exits. She’s not really going to try taking all those beasts on by herself. Not that she couldn’t, probably.

The sky cracks overhead. The magical atmosphere serving as ceiling and containment splits as dark clouds roll in, broiling and shedding rain. Thunder shakes the structure. Dan raises her open palm all the way up.

_She’s calling the storm,_ Neil thinks with confusion, and _Tempest, huh_. Then it hits. _She’s doing both._

Dan snaps her fingers. Lightning forks down from the sky, striking the earth in front of her. She doesn’t flinch. She reaches out and grabs the lightning like rope and yanks. The answering whinny rumbles through the arena like thunder, breaking harsh and powerful, a power magnified tenfold by the storm horse hurtling down from the clouds, a hundredfold by the ease with which she uses the lightning as reins and swings on the horse’s back as it gallops by.

“Dan specializes in storm magic,” Matt states helpfully. “Still think it’s just a pony party?”

“I will turn into an eagle and leave you,” Neil threatens.

“Bro, if you wanted a better view you should’ve just asked to sit on my shoulders!” exclaims Matt, and only the starting gun ends their resultant tussling.

 

 

It’s violent and chaotic and brutally beautiful, the way a warrior fights can be a dance, or a wildfire hypnotic.

Dan wins, of course. On the ground she is unstoppable, but in her element, she is invincible. She is a goddess of the storm. She deals swiftly with anyone who dares attempt unseat her, Tempest never faltering, never tiring, her lightning a lasso when they come upon a phantom steed Tempest can’t surpass in speed, making corporeal its spectral form. When they cross the finish line, Tempest throws back his head, shaking his mane with a crackle, and Dan, beaming, soaked, turns and spots them immediately in the crowd.

Neil takes back everything he’s ever said about the horse races. All of it. Until now.

“When’s the next one?” Neil demands, and Matt laughs and laughs.

 

 

They meet Dan at the paddocks, where she’s chatting with one of the young girls from the race while she brushes down her horse. Dan says something to make her laugh, and the horse snorts flames out of his nostrils. Dan leaps out of the way of the twin streams, and the girl barks at the horse, who puffs smoke and ducks his head at the reprimand. Dan waves off her apology and waves at Matt and Neil, trotting over to them.

After congratulations they head for the food trucks, Matt fawning while Neil questions Dan about every second of the race and she humors him good-naturedly until her order’s ready. They eat greasy fried food perched on abandoned cinder blocks, then make their way towards Wymack’s as the afternoon drips, none of them willing to fight for space in the stands.

Neil keeps Dan and Matt’s larger forms between him and the infirmary looming on the right. Abby’s probably too busy to leave to come harass him, but he can’t take any chances.

Following his last episode, everyone ganged up on him to enforce some “Neil safety” rules. Abby instituted mandatory daily checkups and loaded him down with herbs and amulets and talismans. Renee draws blood every day to check how much magic is left in his blood. He rarely leaves the shop, but when he does, Wymack ordered a buddy system “to drag his ass home if he collapses”. Most of the time, Matt’s his buddy, but when Matt’s not working, Nicky usually volunteers. Allison took advantage of the buddy rule to drag him shopping.

“Seriously, Neil, this will better your chances.”

“How does a crop top better my chances?”

“You’re definitely not going to be die from fashion death.”

“That’s a thing?”

Allison cupped his cheek. “Darling, you’re lucky it hasn’t claimed you already. But don’t worry. I’m here now.”

He’s yet to wear the crop top, but the running shorts and tank top he’s sporting came from Allison’s haul. Cool colors, breathable material, and best of all, designed specifically for shifters, to change skins along with them. Neil never knew such clothes even existed; Mary always charmed their clothes herself, the same way if they didn’t have the money or time for a Laundromat she’d mutter a dimestore incantation in her Serious Magic Voice like _Fresh and clean with Oxiclean._

Modern spells never worked for Neil. You had to imbue them with unwavering belief, and as much bullshit as Neil could spew, the ridiculousness of the whole concept threw him off. Speak with confidence, and you’ll work magic? It sounded like a cheap metaphor from a motivational speaking seminar.

Whatever. He’s grateful to Allison, more than he’d thought he’d be, especially out in the muggy heat. Dan pushes open the door to the small lounge attached to Wymack’s office, and cold air washes over Neil. He shivers down to his toes, making a beeline for the nearest AC vent. He stops short when he realizes who’s sitting crosslegged in front of it, sweaty blond curls lifted off his forehead by the current.

“Andrew.”

He blinks sleepily up at Neil, flushed despite the cold air hitting him in the face. He arches one eyebrow almost lazily in acknowledgement. It’s probably the most relaxed Neil’s ever seen him, and he’s suddenly reluctant to disturb it. Reluctant, but not unwilling.

Neil clears his throat and nudges Andrew in the thigh with his toe. “Scoot over.”

And Andrew, who has always delighted in responding to Neil in the most difficult way possible, whether it be sarcasm or obscurity or simple aggression, _complies._ He shuffles over, leaving an equal amount of space for Neil in front of the vent, then presses his forehead into the grill on his side. Neil drops into the empty space without hesitation; he can’t tell if it’s supposed to be a challenge or if Andrew is just too tired and hot to care, but he’s not throwing the opportunity away regardless. He peels the collar of his shirt away from his chest to facilitate some good air flow. Andrew cracks open an eye.

Neil takes it as an invitation. “Why are you so tired?”

“Why are you so talkative?” Andrew grouches, his voice vibrating off the metal.

“Is that an answer or a complaint?”

Andrew grunts.

Neil smirks. “It’s an answer then. Exhaustion is fundamental to your personality.”

Andrew doesn’t smile, but he angles his face towards Neil instead of away. The grill carves grooves in his forehead. “Close enough.”

Andrew’s close enough to count the freckles dotting his cheeks. Close enough to watch the sweep of his eyelashes as he blinks. Close enough for Neil to take in everything, his chapped lips, the faint white scar across the bridge of his nose, the deep blue bags under his eyes. He swallows. “You know, rose—”

“Rosemary helps with fatigue,” Andrew cuts in. He picks his head up off the vent, bumping his knee into Neil’s. “I know.”

Neil focuses on the place where their bare knees touch. He tells himself they’re just knees, two hard knobs of bone, but Andrew’s is scuffed, and his thighs are thick and strong, and his leg hair is the same blond as the curls crushed against his head, and Neil catches himself wanting to _touch,_ wanting to feel the strength and softness in turn that exist from his toil. He remembers his mother’s roadside education, the myths she’d taught him because they were real. He remembers her lessons. _We are runners. Leave the Atlases to hold up the weight of the world._ He fixes his eyes on Andrew’s knee instead of his shoulders and still thinks, over and over, _Here he is here he is_.

“You should try tea,” he suggests, a second too late to sound natural.

“I have,” says Andrew. He pauses. Digs his knee into Neil’s. “Every morning.”

Every morning. There’s something to unpack there, but Neil saves it for later, when he’s not soaking up the air conditioning in front of half his team in Wymack’s office.

“You need something stronger then,” Neil says, only half-joking. “Maybe a coma.”

“Kevin will need a coma.” Andrew shifts the subject deftly. “I’m leaving after the relay for a few days, and I can’t have a tagalong. I imagine he’ll have quite a bit of separation anxiety, and I give you permission to slip him a sleeping draught if necessary.”

_We are runners._ “Stop. You can’t leave.” He is an Atlas, not a runner. “You can’t leave me with Kevin.”

Andrew sounds almost bored. “Oh, but I can, and I will.”

“Why me?” Neil questions. Kevin rides to the shop with Andrew; he waits on Andrew; he packs lunch for Andrew, though Andrew usually never eats it; he goes home with Andrew. The only place Kevin goes on his own is to the arena with Neil and Wymack. What makes Andrew assume Neil could work as a substitute?

Andrew answers as if it’s obvious, “You’re Kevin’s main focus right now. Who else?”

His immediate thought is Nicky or Aaron, but Kevin lives with them, and if he hasn’t latched on yet, he isn’t likely to any time soon. Neil, at least, he’s devoted to training. Begrudgingly, he accepts the future role.

He sighs. “Does Kevin know?”

“Yes. All that matters to him currently is that I’m in decent shape to play tonight. He’ll be pissed at me later, and you too.”

“Me?” Neil repeats. He’s missing something here, but Andrew’s throwing too much information at him to both process and address it.

“You’re the one dragging me away, after all,” says Andrew, feigning innocence.

“Dragging—oh,” Neil cuts his indignation off. The curse. Of course. Andrew mentioned a lead, weeks ago on a rooftop. A lump forms in his throat. “Where are you going?”

Andrew clamps a hand on Neil’s knee. He delivers his destination like a slap across the face, three syllables stinging Neil’s cheek. “Maryland.”

Stinging, and much worse. It triggers instincts of survival, primitive and primal and _animal,_ and he jerks into motion while Andrew’s lips are still parted around _land._ He doesn’t get far, playing scared and not smart. Andrew pinches his peroneal nerve, sending a jolt through him that cuts off his shift—half-wound muscle and half-formed bone stuttering back to default—drives his knee down, pins his leg to the floor.

“I thought you might have that kind of reaction,” he murmurs. “Breathe, Neil, breathe.”

He grips shaking fistfuls of Andrew’s t-shirt. His mind racing, racing, caught between a dozen shifts and a dozen different versions of his own voice crying and howling and snarling, _Neil. He called me Neil. WHAT DOES HE KNOW?_

“Nothing,” Andrew says, and Neil starts at the response to his thoughts. Andrew assures, “Your history is still a mystery, one I’m growing weary of solving.”

Relief and fear battle in Neil’s stomach, lock up in his chest. Keening fills his ears. He chokes out, “But you knew—Maryland—”

Andrew speaks slowly, carefully, over Neil’s frantic stuttering. “I don’t know what Maryland means. To you. To your past. We did a locator spell, and that’s where the compass pointed.”

“You can’t go there,” Neil insists. “Andrew, he’ll—”

_Stop._

Andrew goes very still. “Who?”

_He’s dead._

The voices fall silent. He is just Neil now, just a human boy. He swallows, untwisting his fingers from Andrew’s shirt. He tries to smooth out the bunched up fabric, but the wrinkles persist.

_Get a grip._

Andrew snaps, “Neil. Who.”

A fragile moment. The space between breaths, both infinite and infinitesimal. One of those sharp, jagged moments that you aren’t sure you’ll see the other side of. It cuts as it passes, but it passes, and he takes a breath. And he remembers, and he is wholly here, in this skin, and he isn’t afraid. He holds the image of a corpse behind his eyes and forces his mind to reckon it.

He says, for the first time, “My father is dead.” What a strange feeling. What an amazing feeling. What an amazing thing to say. “My father is dead. Andrew. He’s gone.” Giddy laughter bubbles up his throat. _“He’s gone.”_

Andrew’s face tightens for the briefest instant, and then he’s grinning harshly and shoving Neil back into the vent, and Neil’s laughing, dragging Andrew with him by the hem of his shirt. His laughter draws the attention of the others and oh right, they’re not alone in the room, even if the intensity of Andrew’s attention has the effect of making it seem that way. Matt and Dan, Renee and Allison, all of them flock over.

“Neil? What’s so funny?” Matt asks, a chuckle ready on his lips.

“Did you crack him?” Allison demands of Andrew.

Andrew shrugs, raising an eyebrow at Neil. A question.

His father is _gone,_ and if this is what saying it feels like, he wishes he said it months ago, instead of carrying around so much unnecessary fear. But he couldn’t have, because until now he had no to say it to. No one he trusted. But he does now. He has people who care.

“My father is dead,” he tells them. Matt’s brows scrunch and he adds, “That’s a good thing.”

The concern vanishes from their faces, and they crowd around the AC, joking and smiling and congratulating Neil and shitting on their shitty parents like it’s their favorite past time, except for Renee, the bloodbender who traded her blood mother for a savior. Neil’s belly aches from all his laughter, and Kevin’s hovering over them ranting about rest and focus, threatening Andrew for breaking his protégé.

When the conversation topic switches, Neil shifts closer to Andrew, leaning against the vent like he’d been when Neil first sat beside him. He feels warm in a way that doesn’t make him sweat, buzzing and earnest. He wonders what bonds he’d find if he could still reach them. If they weren’t hidden. He looks down at Andrew’s hand braced against the carpet. He aligns their pinkies and asks, “Can I touch your hand?”

Andrew glances at the others. “You can’t hold it.”

“I won’t.”

“Pinkies. That’s it.”

Neil smiles, sliding his pinky finger flush against Andrew’s. Slowly he hooks it over Andrew’s second knuckle.

“You were the first,” he says quietly. “The first person I’ve ever trusted enough.”

Andrew swears and turns his head to the side against the vent.

Neil squeezes Andrew’s pinky. “If you’re going to Maryland, I should go with you.”

Andrew rips his hand away. “No.”

“Because of Kevin.”

“Because of _you,”_ Andrew snaps. “Just stay here. I’ll come back.” His body quivers with tension, barely suppressed rage that demands he storm away, but Andrew remains seated.

Neil’s buzzing still, even though something like rejection wilts within him. New bonds, strong bonds. He’s sure. “Andrew.”

“Neil,” he warns.

“Just be careful. My father was the deadliest thing in Maryland, but there’s dark magic everywhere,” advises Neil. He gets to his feet. “If you find out—if you look for my name, or his, you could probably find it. You can do with it what you want—it’s not mine anymore. But be careful.”

Andrew nods. Neil nods back. He’ll come home. Neil trusts him to, how he never would have trusted himself. And when he does, maybe Andrew will let Neil hold his hand.

 

 

“I still can’t believe Wymack convinced Andrew to play,” Matt remarks, standing next to Neil in the tunnel. Outside the announcers boom the list of members of the two relay teams.

Neil fiddles with the newest cuff around his wrist, slapped on by Abby seconds before Wymack ordered them into formation. “Isn’t it a rule?”

“Andrew has to be bribed into following rules,” Dan retorts, sliding up on Neil’s other side. “Here, your marker.”

An orange bandana. Better than a dingo statue. He scrapes his bangs out of his eyes and ties it back.

“What do you think he bribed him with?” Matt muses. “Do you think _I_ could bribe Wymack to install a stereo in the shop?”

Neil bites his tongue. If Matt and Dan don’t know about the fire whiskey arrangement, he won’t spill Andrew’s secret.

The thunder of a thousand feet in the stands saves him from having to create an alternate theory. Kevin leads them out into the arena and across the green circles in the center to their starting positions. Dan takes the center along with a dealer from Breckenridge.

With a _schink_ , the shield closes over them, a transparent dome of air and magic muffling the crowd’s screams and blocking them from any stray fire.

Neil looks to Kevin. Sturdy and solid, no nerves at all. No feathers either. Kevin catches him looking and mouths something, probably _focus_. Neil rolls his eyes at the glare, but settles in anyway. He watches Dan, waiting for the start, and tunes into the earth beneath his feet, waiting for a sign. He draws on his bonds to his second skins, tapping into his baser instincts, the simple connection of beast to nature. It’s not technically cheating Kevin’s methods, but it does increase his awareness tenfold compared to his feeble progress trying it Kevin’s way. He feels the vibration in the air before he sees the white orbs bloom into being.

Dan lunges, scooping up the orange-tinged orb in the center as the Breckenridge dealer snatches their black orb. The white orbs pulse and zip off to hover randomly about the arena. Kevin peels off toward the right half; Neil takes the left. Two of the Breckenridge players mirror them, but Kevin’s finesse and Neil’s speed push them ahead. Kevin nimbly leaps over a chasm that splits open in front of him, already airborne before the ground even cracks. The other player skids to a halt as the chasm belches smoke and ends up doubled over, coughing up their lung. Kevin reaches the looming mass of the obstacle course first and disappears over the wall. With his opponent slowed by the smoke damage, Kevin should make it through and secure the flag easily. Neil almost wants to watch, test his time, but he’s got his own flag to worry about.

The way it works is thus: each orb, once claimed, unfurls into a flag. There’s six total: four white that are fair game, and then two custom flags for the teams to defend. Two people per team go after the white flags (Kevin and Neil).

The offensive dealer (Dan) receives their team flag at the start of the match. The opposing team’s defensive dealer’s goal is to steal the team flag from them—dealers are the only ones allowed in the green circles in the center, and once in possession of their flag, offensive dealers are restricted to their circle until they relinquish the flag to another member of their team. (Allison’s their defensive dealer.) Said member then runs their team flag to their Keeper, though they have to cross the field successfully without being intercepted and robbed by the opposite team to do so (Nicky, Aaron, and Matt are the rest of their defensive line).

The Keeper position explains itself. The keepers of the flags, inside their box they are untouchable, their safety and the flags’ safety absolute. Keepers rarely ever leave their boxes, but if they do, they operate without the restrictions of the rest of the players, but without any protection either. (Andrew and Renee.) One Keeper must remain in the box at all times, or else the flags’ protection is null and void.

The runners (Neil and Kevin) are the only ones who can transport the flags, and they can only move one flag at a time. Once all the flags have been claimed, each team puts forth a gladiator to fight in the sand pit. Winning a round earns you one of your opponent’s flags, and the fight continues until the opposite team has no flags left. Hence why you want to collect as many white flags as you can, to give yourself a buffer, and so the other team has less chances. (Matt is their gladiator.) During this the rest of the teams try to sabotage and keep their gladiators from being sabotaged in turn. Once your gladiator possesses the enemy’s flag, it’s the job of a runner to plant it in your Keeper’s box. The match officially ends with the planting of an enemy’s flag, but most of the time, especially with Breckenridge, a giant brawl breaks out that everyone stays to watch.

He and Kevin already agreed during practice on who would be going for what flags. Kevin would take the obstacle course and the fog, the two most time-consuming and difficult, and Neil the lake, wall of fire, and the team flag. He’s heading for the lake first; Dan assured him she could hold her own, even against Gorilla.

“Some teams bank on ability and skill,” Kevin told him, after one of their morning practices. “Others use strategy, let you make the first move, do all the hard work, then steal the flag right out from under you. And then there are teams who rely solely on aggression.”

“Let me guess,” Neil replied. “The Jackals aren’t skilled or strategic.”

The fact they had a teammate known as Gorilla gave it away.

He reaches the shore of the lake, no orb in sight. Resting at the bottom, then. He glances up at the Jackal still fifteen feet away, lumbering toward him. He doesn’t know what kind of magic they have, whether they’re an elementalist or strong in telekinesis. He can’t waste time. He wades into the lake and tugs on a bond.

His double coat folds over him as he flexes webbed feet. He slips under the water in an otter’s skin.

He feels the ripple a second before something large and awkward dives in with a splash. He pushes himself harder, deeper, skirting to the side to avoid any potential jockeying with the Jackal. It’ll be head-on for the orb, if they’re fast. If Neil isn’t faster.

He’s close enough to see the grains of sand sticking to the orb when something jerks his tail. He thrashes free, swiping out with the claws of his hind legs. He rolls around in the water to face whatever creature guards the orb, meeting two appendages jutting forward at him. He twists out of their reach and makes another dive for the orb. The Jackal will be here any second, and he can’t leave without it.

His instincts scream for him to flee, to put distance between him and the creature, but he ignores them. Ignores them until he’s grabbed around the belly and dragged back through the water, struggling as he’s yanked along up to the surface. He blinks water out of his eyes, scrabbling at the arms holding him. Arms. _Human._

The Jackal.

He sinks his teeth into the soft flesh of her arm. Instead of dropping him she smacks the back of his head. Her fingers close around his throat.

_Any second now she’ll toss me aside and go back for the orb,_ Neil thinks. _Any second._

But she doesn’t.

_And then there are teams who rely solely on aggression._

She’s going to kill him.

Neil kicks feebly. The Jackal grins, squeezing his neck tighter. She’s one of those—those who enjoy violence, enjoy blood and guts and messy, brutal ends. Like his father. She’ll strangle him rather than his break his neck, quick and clean. He did not come to South Carolina to die.

His otter lungs burn. _Shift shift shift._ He lets himself fall limp, lets his eyes shut, expels his breath. _Shift shift shift._ Pushes his mind far and wide and out, enough to trick his body into a trance, slow his heartbeat to nothing beneath the Jackal’s fingers. She laughs, giving him an extra squeeze, and drops the otter’s body into the water.

_Shift shift shift_

He lands with a splash

_Shift shift shift yes_

and sheds this small skin for something much larger, much _toothier._

The Jackal screams when he rises out of the water and crushes her arm between an alligator’s jaws.

He releases her. She staggers from the lake, cradling her mangled arm to her chest. She makes it as far as the shore before she collapses from shock. Neil retrieves the orb easily, jogging past her prone form with it tucked under his arm.

He passes the orb off to Renee when he reaches the Box without incident. “Am I first?”

Renee, smiling, steps aside so he can see Andrew, lying on the ground using a white flag as a blanket.

“Kevin,” Neil swears, just his name a sufficient curse in and of itself.

“Kevin,” Renee confirms. “You can still lock all of yours in before he does. He’s usually slower through the fog.”

“You should hurry,” Andrew says, without bothering to open his eyes. “The Gorilla’s excited tonight. Dan won’t have any teeth left if you dawdle.”

Neil takes off, dodging stray blasts, constantly adjusting his path to avoid the ongoing skirmishes between their defensive line and the Jackals. In his peripheral vision he sees Matt fling a Jackal to the side, right into a stone pillar Aaron drives out of the earth to meet him. Another Jackal hangs suspended in the air by vines on his right. He rolls beneath the excess energy of a burst of magic that sends Nicky flying. He winces in sympathy but keeps moving.

“Neil!” Dan shouts. She holds the orb in one hand and a whip of lightning in the other. She slashes it across Gorilla’s face. He roars, stumbling, and she darts past him to the edge of the green.

Neil meets her there, both of their arms outstretched, as Gorilla snarls and swings his fist down at Dan. With a yelp she rolls out of the way, orb tucked to her chest. He smashes a fist into the grass next to her head and raises his other. Dan snaps her whip. With a growl Gorilla catches it, grip unyielding even as his fur smokes.

Neil can do nothing but watch as Gorilla picks Dan up by her ankles and slams her back into the ground. Watch and yell.

“Let go of the flag, Dan!”

_“Like hell!”_ she spits, and spits a glob of blood out of her mouth.

Dan flops onto her back. She extends her arm as Gorilla hunches over her. Gorilla snorts, baring his teeth. Dan grins through blood and cracked bone as thunder rumbles through the dome. A lightning bolt strikes Dan in the chest, and for a split second, Neil thinks it was a mistake, that it missed her hand, that Dan’s just been electrocuted by her own storm. Her body spasms, and then she jolts upright, ripping the bolt from her chest and leaping to her feet, fluid and strong. The bolt lengthens and crackles in her hand, a spear of pure electricity. Gorilla charges. Dan _jumps_ and stabs the spear into Gorilla’s eye.

Gorilla bellows and whines. She leaves him impaled, returning to the circle’s edge. She presses the orb into his hands.

“Dan, are you—” he tries.

“ _Go,_ Neil,” she urges. She steps free of the circle and shoves him. “Go!”

“Dan!” Allison shouts. They both look to see her smash her foot into the Jackals’ offensive dealer’s face, snatching the black orb from his loose hands. She scrambles away from where they’d been wrestling. Dan rushes to meet her.

Neil nearly follows. “Only one,” Dan barks, pointing at the orb in his arms. “We’ll be fine, Neil, just go!”

The Jackal dealer groans and gets up. Neil sprints back the way he came.

It’s like running through a minefield. Constant explosions, unstable ground, sprays of blood misting the air, the acrid stench of smoke clogging his nose. He makes it back to the Keepers’ Box and hands the orange orb off to Renee.

“Wall of fire,” she reminds him.

He shakes his head. “Dan,” he pants, “and Allison.”

Renee grabs him by the elbow before he can take off again. “They can handle themselves, Neil. Your job is the rest of the orbs.”

“I—”

“If they are in true danger, I will help them,” Renee promises him. “Remember, the best thing you can do for them, all of them, is to run.”

And so he does.

The wall of fire, a sheet of ten feet flames, burns steadily, untouched and deserted. In the heart of it, the orb.

Kevin probably should have took this one. There’s no way to get the orb without using magic, and Neil can’t use magic unless he wants to vomit his way to a medical evacuation. He’d insisted, though, nowhere near close to matching Kevin’s mastery of the obstacle course and wanting to avoid the fog segment as long as possible. The very idea of stumbling around blind instantly activates his flight response, so he’d opted out, which left the wall of fire as his only option.

He picks up a pebble lying the dirt and tosses it into the flames. It’s vaporized instantly with not even a hiss to mark its death.

Well. Water spells really aren’t that difficult. He knows a few simple enough for even a non-elementalist like himself. It might not even take that much magic; he could handle being paralyzed in agony for a few minutes.

“Shit.”

He starts pacing to get rid of some of the nervous energy thrumming in his bones. If only he could just break the fire like a ward—

Who says he can’t.

_Act like it’s just a door you’ve been through a thousand times before._

He takes a breath. Steps close enough to feel the heat wash over his skin. He focuses beneath the heat, on the buzzing, loosens his shoulders, and closes his eyes. And walks.

The wards tingle across his skin. Sweat trickles down his neck. He holds himself in check, slow and casual no matter the heat baking him like a brick oven. He’s not burning. _It’s working._ He keeps walking and grabs the orb when it bumps into his chest. As his fingers close over it, the flames extinguish in a shower of warm rain. Neil opens his eyes.

“Neil!”

He hears that voice in his sleep at night, ordering him to do drills, dream harder, snore louder. He spins around, spotting Kevin across the arena near the green. He’s got his orb strapped to him in some harness reminiscent of a baby sling, leaving his arms free to wave at Neil. Somehow Kevin applies enough aggression to his waving to make it appear hostile, reprimanding. He jabs a finger at the Keepers’ Box.

It’s his third orb! He knows where he’s going. Neil brushes Kevin off and deliberately sprints the rest of the way to beat him there.

If Andrew expects them to get along tonight, he’s bound to be sorely mistaken. Kevin will devote all his energy to chewing Neil out for every single thing he did wrong.

Andrew. Neil quickens his feet, just a tad. He can see Andrew sitting up in the grass now, black sunglasses pushed to the top of his head, the orange flag draped around his shoulders. With a jolt Neil realizes Andrew sits alone. Renee’s left the box.

Neil drops to his knees at the box’s edge, the white paint lines on turf marking a wide rectangle. He tips the orb inside the perimeter. Andrew nudges it with his toe, and it unfolds into a pile of cloth. Delivery made, he turns to lend a hand wherever he can—or lap Kevin, whichever comes first.

“You’ll just get in their way,” says Andrew. “You’re a runner. You’ve done your job.”

“Too easy,” Neil mutters. “My job was too easy.”

Andrew raises an eyebrow. “I’m sure Kevin will be thrilled.”

“No, not because of me,” Neil denies. The minimal confrontation he’d had during his runs, the wall of fire left alone. “Because of them. They didn’t go after me.”

Andrew props his chin on his knee, shredding grass between his fingers idly. Boredly he explains, “They’re sussing you out. To see if it’s worth it to sic Gorilla on you. It’s standard for Breckenridge.”

Neil gawks. Strategy analysis from Andrew, who Neil assumed was bribed to be here.

Kevin’s arrival interrupts the barrage of questions collecting in Neil’s head. He chunks the orb in Andrew’s lap. A horn blares as the flag expands.

The end of the first match. Matt and his challenger get a minute and a half reprieve while the officials fill the sand pit. The team surrounds him, offering tips, wiping away any blood, producing ice packs and water bottles and in Aaron’s case, a tonic to restore some of his energy. Nicky calls it “super Gatorade.” Aaron hits him.

“If you let that overgrown monkey kick your ass, Matthew, you can kiss _this_ ass goodbye,” Dan threatens.

Matt rolls up the sleeves of his undershirt.

“Does Gorilla ever shift out of the gorilla?” Neil asks Kevin. Spending too much time in an animal form runs the risk of losing some of your humanity. It becomes harder and harder to shift back the longer you stay, and eventually, you can’t. Either because you’ve forgotten how, higher brain functions reduced to primeval instinct, or so much of you is now it that you don’t want to. Taking on a true gorilla’s characteristics would explain at least partly the level of rage Gorilla exhibits.

“I’ve never seen it if he does,” Kevin mutters. They stand shoulder to shoulder as the gongs signal the end of Matt’s break.

Round One. Matt steps into the pit, followed by a Jackal none of them have ever seen. Neil waits for the kid to step out of the way, back out of the sand. A dull wave of dissent washes in from the crowd; if Neil still hears it through the shield charms, the crowd must be _rioting._

“Come on!” Nicky hollers. “We don’t want to be here all night! I have clubs to hit!”

But the kid stands firm.

As long as he’s been on their roster, Breckenridge has always put Gorilla forth as their challenger. Until now. He’s even missing from their lineup, clumped around the other side of the pit, scowling.

Matt glances over his shoulder, obviously confused. Just a glance, but long enough for the Jackal to produce a talisman and blast Matt in the chest with raw energy.

Matt flies backward and slams into the ward surrounding the gladiator pit. He crumples onto the sand amidst outrage from all sides.

Dan shoves forward. She bangs her open palm against the ward. “Get up, Matt! He’s coming— _get up!”_

Matt groans, pushing up on his elbow as the Jackal advances. Matt’s back is to them, so Neil only glimpses the red, angry wound blistering across Matt’s chest. He rises to his knees, stumbles through the command words for his armor. If it’d been a fair match, he would have shook hands with his opponent and activated his armor before the first blow. That blast never would have hit him, absorbed by his chest plate instead. But the Jackal isn’t playing fair. As his armor plates spread across his skin, rising from the thick black lines tattooed down his arms and sides, the Jackal lifts the talisman to his throat and lets loose a sonic scream.

Matt collapses. His helmet solidifies before his face strikes the sand. Too little too late.

The crowd goes silent, stunned. The Jackal pumps his fists as the gongs count the seconds. Renee crouches on the other side of the ward from Matt. Dan snarls.

Ten gongs. A knockout. The first of Matt’s career. The topmost of their five flags shimmers and disappears from the makeshift seedling flagpole Aaron constructed.

Neil’s guts twist as if someone reached a hand in and grabbed him by the intestine.

Free to minister at the end of the round, Renee curls two fingers towards her palm, raising Matt’s heart rate. His eyes flash open. Renee moves aside, and Kevin and Dan both take her place, crowding each other as they dispense strategy. Eventually Matt brushes them off, climbing to his feet. He taps his fist against his chest plate and shifts into his preferred stance.

Round Two goes quickly. Matt, prepared this time, evades or counters every attack and rapidly advances on the Jackal, driven by the team’s shouting and his brief taste of defeat. Backed against the wards and shaking, the Jackal emits another sonic scream in a last ditch effort. It rebounds off Matt’s armor in the close proximity, and he knocks himself out instead.

Both Matt and their lost flag return to them, Matt storming along the edge of the ward. One of the strongest combat mages Neil’s ever seen, the charade made of this event must grate on him and his magic. The insult demands retribution.

The Jackals revive the kid. Matt stalks him about the pit, sending him scurrying, tripping over his own feet. He clutches his talisman. Occasionally he’ll pivot and deliver a short burst. Matt leaps into those, letting his armor absorb the energy and store it, letting it build up.

They’re all so focused on Matt, they aren’t watching Breckenridge across the pit. They aren’t looking for the vanished Gorilla. Kevin, senses so deeply attuned to the foundations of the arena, is the only one to notice the faint tremor of the ground.

He grabs Neil’s arm. “Something’s coming.”

And the tremor grows and grows, a thousand stomping feet escalating into an earthquake. Andrew herds Nicky and Aaron away from the wards to stabler earth, Aaron dropping into a kowtow once the dirt beneath his feet steadies. Kevin stumbles over to him. Neil slips loose before Kevin can drag him after and joins the girls at the wards. If the Jackals are going to try to sabotage Matt even more, this is the time.

The earth erupts. Chunks of dirt explode outward as a shower of soil rains down on them. Not from the pit, no, behind them. Neil spins, arms covering his head, as whatever burst from the ground momentarily blocks out the dying, dusky light.

_Gorilla._

And it is Gorilla, launched from an underground tunnel by a Breckenridge stonesmith, hurtling down directly at him. Them. His limbs coil but he shoves back the shift urging him to run. He throws himself into the nearest, Allison, instead. He hears screaming, and in the seconds before he’s crushed he can pick out their individual cries.

_Brace brace brace,_ he thinks, but how do you brace for this? His body tightens, and his nerve endings light up like a switchboard as power rushes through his veins. Magic, sharply, acutely painful, achingly familiar, desperately missed, it rises from some hidden well and floods out of him. A glowing shield flickers to life over his head. Gorilla lands directly on it and Neil throws up another hand to reinforce the magic as the shield spiderwebs and sputters. He pours it all into the shield. All of it. All he has to give.

It holds long enough for the others to taunt Gorilla off of him, for the gongs to announce Matt stealing their final flag. Gorilla charges off after Kevin. Neil’s arms smack into the ground. The shield dissolves.

He hears, “You idiot,” before his vision goes black.

 

-

 

_You were right._

_About what?_

_The first thing Neil asked when he woke up was “Did we win”_

_He’s predictable. It’s disappointing._

_He asked about you too_

_I don’t do bedsides._

_Normally you don’t leave the state either_

_If this is you giving your opinion on me leaving him comatose I don’t want it._

_:(_

_Ending this is how I save him._

_Watch yourself up there Andrew_

_I will, Renee._

He turns his phone off, tucking it into one of the pockets inside his jacket. He pulls out the map of Baltimore to check once more that he’s in the right place. Two dots of blood, side by side. Andrew’s, tracking his own location, and Neil’s, tracking the site of the necromancy. Magical GPS. He’s here.

He was never raised with Renee or Nicky’s faith, but he still fights off the compulsion to make the sign of the cross before he enters the cemetery.

It’s quiet, the dawn the only witness to the dead. Everyone too busy celebrating Lughnasadh to lament. Fine with Andrew. He’d prefer no audience for what he’s about to do.

He extends his senses as far as he can with no magic to amplify them, searching for the familiar dark thread of Neil’s curse. It quivers, thick and vibrant, and he latches on, following it like a homing beacon. He ends up in front of a stately mausoleum, all sharp peaks and Greek pillars and white stone. The double doors are wood, carved with grotesque images of carnage and bloodshed, souls being dragged down to hell.

Set into the stone above the door reads a family name.

WESNINSKI

Andrew props open both doors. Sunlight floods the central aisle. He makes his way inside, shoes scuffing across marble. It’s clean, well maintained, the brass braziers on the walls polished and the shelves next to each crypt sporting vases of fresh flowers. Pink carnations for all the crypts on the right, bright orange nasturtium for the one on the far left and—

Black roses next to it.

Andrew approaches cautiously, feeling for any hidden wards or traps. There are none in front of either crypt, the two newest claimed in the building. He brushes his fingers over the black plate mounted next to the crypt with the roses, gold letters spelling NATHANIEL WESNINSKI.

He allows himself ten seconds. Ten seconds to hold the memory of Neil laughing in his mind, so giddy, so thrilled that he could say his father was dead. Andrew had no doubt after that, no doubt that Neil’s father was a monster trying to drag his son to hell. No doubt that Andrew wasn’t going to let that happen. Ten seconds.

He unzips his duffel bag and goes to work with the sledgehammer. He smashes open the crypt, then the end of the coffin. Easy destruction. Not even a ward to brush away like cobwebs. If it was any other time Andrew might be disappointed. Half the appeal of cursebreaking, after all, was the glamour of old-fashioned death-trap tombs. But there’s no puzzles here, no protection. He reaches his bare arm inside the coffin to pry out Wesninski’s semi-decomposed remains, but there’s no body either. Just debris from Andrew’s renovations.

He checks again, shining a flashlight into the hole. Nothing. They interred an empty coffin. Or Nathaniel’s already up walking around.

No. Impossible. Neil would be comatose if it was that far along. He was moved. Except he couldn’t have been, because this mausoleum is where the curse originated. Where the homing beacon led. The walls are soaked in dark magic, even if there’s not a trace on Nathaniel Wesninski’s crypt.

_Oh._ He presses his hand to the plate reading NATHAN and immediately recoils, struck by a tidal wave of hatred.

Nathan is the father. He saw the black roses and just assumed—black roses mean death, and what better way to signify a site of necromancy? But it isn’t a sign. It’s Marking someone, an act of taking the deliverance of a person’s fate into your own hands. Nathan is the father, which means Nathaniel—Nathaniel is the son. Nathaniel is _Neil._

He turns on Nathan’s crypt with a vengeance and meets the wards he’d been expecting. They lash out before he even touches them and Andrew seizes hold, ripping them out by the handful. If there’s he gained from this long exercise of futility with Neil’s curse, it’s experience, plenty of it. He shreds his way to the hard labor and demolishes the crypt as the sun rises higher in the sky.

He wipes the sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand while it’s still clean of dead body germs. Then he reaches in and heaves out Nathan Wesninski’s rotting corpse.

It’s gross, but Andrew doesn’t pay attention to that. He doesn’t pay attention to that because he hears footsteps outside, coming up the path to the mausoleum.

A woman appears in the doorway. Lips bright red like blood split around a smile of bared teeth.

“Oh, Nathaniel,” she says, “is that you under there?”

She sounds delighted. Andrew’s going to be sick.

She crosses the room toward him, pausing to survey the extra damage he dealt while recklessly decimating the crypts. Her smiles flips into a pout when she sees what he did to father and son.

“You’re not going to have a place to rest now, Junior.” She shakes her head. “Giving your life for your father might have redeemed you, but after this?” She smiles again, and it’s nothing short of sinister. “There won’t be anything left of you to put to rest.”

“You won’t touch him.”

The woman laughs. “Oh, so it isn’t Junior wriggling around under that face! Well, I hate to break it to you, but I already have. Touched him. In the most intimate way.”

_Andrew is going to be sick._ He needs to _burn_ that lascivious look off of her _face._

“Surely you’ve seen my work. My _magic_.”

And it’s better but it’s worse and it’s all just bad bad bad and the line between burning and being burned _blurs_ in his head he’s so angry—

_For Neil,_ whispers a voice that is Bee that is Renee that is Abby Wymack, _for Neil._

_You can’t let her win,_ demands Kevin.

No. He can’t. He came here with a job, and her presence changes nothing.

He thinks back to his discussions with Renee, his research into necromancy. There’d always been a chance of an outsider involved, that it wasn’t Neil’s father working from beyond the grave or a failsafe he planted years ago contingent on his death. They’d talked about it, mentally prepped for it.

Andrew couldn’t have prepped for how the very concept of this woman’s magic anywhere near Neil makes his blood curdle, makes his skin tight and raw, makes the phantom parts of him where magic used to be ache to crack and shake the earth.

And she’s still talking. “Of course, I didn’t get to lay my own hand on him—that bitch trained Junior to spook so easily—but soon, soon. And I could feel it, anyway, when the curse passed into him through that girl. I hate using proxies, and he spooked anyway! I’m not a girl afraid of getting my hands dirty, I should’ve just done it myself.”

Andrew can’t bear to hear her go on any longer. He cuts her off with the obvious, “You’re his witch.”

“That’s right. And you’d be Junior’s?”

None of it even makes sense, this archaic practice of keeping “witches” in one’s circle, like they all don’t have magic anyway. It’s dumb, and Andrew belongs to himself first and foremost, but it almost tickles something pleasant. Him and Neil. A pair. Almost, because he can’t even be his own witch because he has no magic, but this woman at least has yet to pick up on that.

So he shrugs.

“One witch to another, you understand then.” And she steps forward, crafting a wicked blade from the air. “You have to die now.”

 

-

 

“Would you just sit down?” Neil snaps. Kevin shoots him a glare, stubbornly refusing to join Neil on the counter, but he does cease his pacing.

“How much longer?”

Neil grits his teeth. “Nicky said they’d grab the car and be here in ten minutes. Which is what I told you when you asked the same question one minute ago. I don’t even know why them picking us up is necessary. You’ve slept over before.”

“I am _not_ sharing a bed with you again,” Kevin growls.

“ _You_ were the one taking up all the space!” Neil protests.

They argue back and forth over their previous sleepover adventure, rehashing the same claims and complaints, until Kevin physically turns his back on Neil, inflicting the silent treatment no matter what Neil says to goad him. Eventually they both tire of the toll immaturity requires and slump against the counter, Neil kicking his feet idly, Kevin tracing the grooves carved into the wood. They wait in silence until the rumbling of Neil’s stomach echoes through the empty shop.

Kevin stares.

“I just woke up from a near death experience,” Neil defends. “I’m hungry.”

Kevin opens his mouth, but Neil jumps in before he can speak.

“Don’t you dare say anything about chicken, rice, or meal prep,” he threatens. “Don’t do it, Kevin. I’m asking Nicky to get pizza, but I don’t have to suggest ice cream, not unless you force my hand. We both know when confronted you can’t resist cheat foods.”

Kevin shuts his mouth. He flicks Neil savagely in the forehead. Neil swats at his hand. Kevin nudges his shoulder into Neil’s in a halfhearted shove and leaves it there, leaning on Neil like furniture.

“Is this what being brothers is like?” Kevin asks softly.

_Wouldn’t you know,_ Neil thinks, but he reframes it with the scraps of story he’s heard and pieced together on his own. _It’s not what you know._

Kevin should’ve been brothers with Riko, the nephew of Tetsuji Moriyama, who’d developed the Games with Kevin’s mother and taken Kevin in after her death. But that isn’t how it played out, as evidenced by the tremors in Kevin’s hand, the warped tattoo on his cheek, his endeavor to reteach himself to shift.

Riko and Tetsuji were purists in the business of buying shifters under the guise of crafting the perfect relay team. They believed their way of shifting was the only true way it should be done and forcibly rehabilitated anyone practicing a different style. The end goal, Neil supposed, was domination. Superiority.

His father _(dead dead dead)_ had tried to trade him to Tetsuji before Mary took him and ran. After the assassination attempt, he didn’t trust any shifters, including his wife and son, and set about eliminating them from his house swiftly and without remorse. Mary running got them out of the house, Neil remembers pointing out, but having them in the wind was too big a risk.

Kevin had endured years of synchronized, meticulous shifting, into one thing and one thing only. A raven.

The twin ravens on Kevin’s cheekbone were a Mark, binding him to Riko, allowing him control over where Kevin shifted, when Kevin shifted.

That isn’t brotherhood.

“I’ve never had a brother,” Neil tells him. “But I guess you’ll do.”

Kevin flicks him again, and that’s when Neil feels it, reverberating through the counter. The wards. Someone’s coming.

Neil flicks Kevin back. “Go get me my jacket. I’m cold.”

“It’s summer,” Kevin deadpans.

“Must be the blood loss.”

Kevin groans, tramping upstairs reluctantly. Neil waits for him to pass out of sight, then slides down from the counter. He slips outside the shop as quietly as he can. No sense bringing trouble in where there’s already plenty to be found.

They’re easy to spot, walking down the sidewalk in formation, dressed from head to toe in black. He’s seen them in person only once, but he recognizes them from two shopfronts away.

Speak of the Devil. Riko and his unkindness of ravens.

Neil meets them between the shop and the music store next door. When Riko halts his march, the others immediately copy, fanning out around him.

“I’m here for Kevin,” Riko informs him. “It’s time he came home. Now that he can shift again, we’ll need to reteach him the right way to do things. Not the—” he looks down his nose “—heretical way.”

Neil rolls his eyes. “Why don’t you take your right way and shove it up your ass. We aren’t looking for that here, and ‘we’ includes Kevin.”

Riko blinks. It takes him a moment longer to actually comprehend he was denied, and then he stalks toward Neil. “You will regret your attitude.”

Neil smirks. “No, I don’t think I will.”

The great thing about not shifting into only one creature? It’s easy to find a skin capable of beating someone else’s. Riko crosses within five feet of him, and Neil shifts into a grizzly bear.

It’s enough of a shock that half the Ravens falter, forgetting their training in the face of a beast. The other half revert to raven form as if by some fear-trigger default. One or two attempt to divebomb Neil, but they underestimate his reach. He swats one out of the sky and shaves the tailfeathers of the second with a swipe of his claws.

Riko remains human, as does the dark-haired boy at his side, his shoulders permanently hunched, eyes shadowed so deeply his eyelashes must enjoy their own day and night. Riko scowls. “I see you’ll need the program as well. Step aside. You can have your turn after Kevin joins us.”

Neil roars, planting himself in front of the shop doors. He fends off a few more ravens before shifting back into his human skin in order to embrace hypocrisy as his new life motto. _Be careful,_ he’d told Andrew.

Neil presses both his palms to the front door and if he has any magic left, he can’t feel it, so he focuses on intent, on _safe_ and _home_ and _protect protect protect_. The wards swell beneath his hands, the facade pulsing briefly with gentle light.

He tries the door handle just to be safe. It won’t budge, not even for him.

Riko fumes. “Fine. We’ll see how much fun Kevin has without his toy. Take him,” he barks.

Dizziness sends his head swimming. He stumbles into the building. Two of the Ravens grabs his arms as his knees buckle.

“Shift,” Riko orders. “Raven.”

Neil works up a glob of saliva and spits it at Riko’s feet as the world spins round and round.

Riko does not like that. He does not like that at all. He backhands Neil for it, the sharp pain actually bringing him to focus for a short moment. Then he snaps his fingers, and the one with the dark hair shuffles forward, a sphere of crackling energy collecting in his hand.

“Shift,” Riko says again, “into a raven, or Jean will blow up this whole building. And wouldn’t that be so unfortunate, Wymack with his rampant fire losing control, burning down his own business and killing a celebrity in the process. He wouldn’t even make it to prison.”

_Shit._ His head’s too fuzzy to think up a scheme to get out of this.

_“Shift!”_

Neil shifts. Riko follows suit, then Jean when Riko gives the signal. Jean drops behind, and Neil assumes it’s whatever weird formation they use until he feels a searing pain on his back, and suddenly his mind is _full_.

A loud voice, demanding, asserting power, worming its way into every recess of Neil’s brain. It orders formations, flight patterns, obedience. It’s Riko’s voice, and Neil knows immediately what has happened. He’s been branded. He’s been Marked, and he can’t help following the rest of the flock as they head north. He sees Kevin through the loft windows as he flies by and hopes Nicky gets there soon.

 

 

As they fly, Riko’s voice grows louder and louder. _Don’t think,_ he commands, and Neil’s mind goes blank. He falls into a trance, a hive mind. When he resurfaces, the landscape is completely different, and the sun is in a different place in the sky. He doesn’t remember anything of their flight.

 

 

It happens again. This time it’s late afternoon and his wings ache so badly he fears they’ll just stop flapping and he’ll fall out of the sky. He’s lagging behind, near the rear of the flock. Jean is next to him, surprisingly. At first Neil thinks Riko placed him here to watch Neil, but as the reprieve from the mind control stretches, he notices Jean’s flying funny. He’s lagging worse than Neil. He can barely keep to a straight line, and he keeps dipping and wheeling awkwardly before he corrects himself. When Neil realizes, the gravity of the situation he’s stuck in truly hits him. Jean’s wings, broken too many times and never allowed to fully heal—that will be Neil.

 

 

Neil finds the more he lags, the less oppressive Riko’s voice in his head. He can’t lag too much obviously, or else Riko will call him back to the forefront. But if he creeps slowly, through natural exhaustion, he escapes the trance.

 

 

Jean’s wings can’t sustain such hard flight. He has to coast for a while, sinking to a lower altitude, and Riko doesn’t seem to care that Neil accompanies him. As long as showboating occupies Riko’s attention, which is almost always, Neil’s safe as he can be.

 

 

They speak while Jean coasts, soft chitters and short chirps, never the long caws the others exploit. Jean is lonely and Neil is desperate, and in the face of this he temporarily ignores that Jean would have blown up his home if he hadn’t done what Riko said.

 

 

Jean basically gives him his escape plan. He’s got a million potential plots of his own, each worked through and calculated and boldly daring, and each worthless because between his wings and the hold Riko has on him, Jean is never going anywhere but with the flock. It’s not any of Jean’s plans though that Neil chooses to execute. No, it’s the not-so-secret Jean reveals of Kevin’s escape. Breaking the bond.

_How hard can it be?_ Neil presses Jean. It has to be fragile. It’s not even a day old.

_But how are you going to do it?_

_I’ll have to shift,_ Neil decides.

If Jean could have flailed, he would have. _He controls when we shift, Neil._

_Not this time._

 

 

It takes him three tries and a bit of reckless endangerment.

Jean is right. Riko controls their voluntary shifts, but by their very nature no one has ever staked a claim on involuntary shifts. How do you pretend to control something that’s inherently out of your control?

The first two times he tries to will it through emotional responses. Anger, sadness. By the third he’s figured out those aren’t strong enough, and only one thing will be: adrenaline. Shock. So when their flight guides them above a wooded area, he lingers at the rear of the flock, then tucks his wings and dive bombs toward the canopy. He crashes through the branches with an odd collection of limbs, the bond to Riko snapping as he plummets like the sensation of his ears popping.

 

 

He throws up black blood, thinks _not again_. He manages to crawl a few feet into the foliage, shifts into a rabbit, and passes out.

 

-

 

“Arimathean Circles,” says Andrew. “Gotta love ‘em.”

The woman prowls on the other side of his hastily scribbled chalk line. He clenches his knife in one hand and his weeping hand in the other, blood dripping between his fingers from the ragged slice across his palm whenever he squeezes his fist.

A shark like her, he’d have thought she would’ve been drawn to his blood, spilled moments before she walked through the doors. He’d thrown down the Circle as soon as he heard her, and she hadn’t even noticed until she’d lunged face-first into it, smacking off the barrier while Andrew didn’t even flinch.

She’d tried to carve it to ribbons, to start with, then to break it. Either she wasn’t familiar with any form of protective magic or she was just shockingly bad—whichever it was, Andrew was sure Neil could have done more damage in his hapless deprivation. She seems determined to wait him out now, but he doubts she’ll last that long.

He lifts the heel of his boot, taps it on the floor once before driving it down on Nathan’s pinky finger. Bone crunches beneath it.

She whips around, slashing with her blade. It bounces off the Circle’s shields. Gnashing her teeth, she stomps off in frustration. Case in point.

“Stop the curse,” Andrew repeats. He’d named his price earlier, not that she’d entertained any idea other than brute force since then. “Stop the curse and leave.”

She throws her head back and laughs.

“Fine.” It’s the outcome he expected, and the outcome he’d _wanted,_ if he’s being honest. It’s the outcome where he gets to do this.

He pulls a jug of his duffel and unscrews the cap. Thick pungent fumes rise out of it. Gasoline. The woman ignores the smell at first but snaps to attention when he empties the jug over Nathan’s body. She loudly renews her efforts to destroy the Circle as he thoroughly douses the son of a bitch and strikes a match.

_For Neil,_ he thinks, and sets Nathan ablaze.

It smells ten times as worse as it looked, but the satisfaction is adequate compensation. He covers his mouth and nose with the collar of his shirt, his grin an outline against the fabric. It isn’t his fire, but it’s close enough.

The witch seethes, shaking with rage, practically foaming at the mouth. “You think this is over? You think destroying his body will stop this? Nathaniel _will die_ and Nathan _will rise again_.” Her voice rises sharply as spit flies from her lips. “Objects are tied to souls too, if they’re perfect representations of a person. I can think of no better representation of the Butcher than his cleaver. Nathan’s spirit will rise and he will _cleave_ Nathaniel’s head in two.”

Andrew’s heart races, but he forces himself to calm. He still holds all the cards.

“I thought of that. ‘What if burning the body doesn’t work?’ But the solution was never burning the body. It was always killing the caster, and there’s no getting around that. I just like to cover my bases. You understand.”

She snarls. “You think you can kill me from behind your little shield?”

“Maybe. But, like I said, my bases.” He reaches in his duffel again, this time removing a stoppered cylinder sloshing with glowing green liquid. “An explosive like Greek fire will bring the whole building down. You can burn like he did.” He kicks Nathan’s ashes for emphasis.

Her eyes flash. “You’ll die too.”

Andrew raises an eyebrow. “And?”

“ _And_ so will your precious Nathaniel,” she snaps. “I’ve got my magic so tightly wound around his soul, if I go, so does he.”

“He’s stronger than that,” Andrew dismisses.

“Is he?” She grins. “Is he still, or was he ever? Because it was the taste of his magic that woke me this morning, and I came here because I thought it might be time.”

His heart abandons the race and kicks into overdrive. Neil using magic? This morning? Already, after he just woke from a coma? It must’ve been an hour ago at most, after he talked to Renee. She’s too smug to be bluffing. _The fuck, Neil._

“You can’t stop this,” she hisses.

“Run.”

_“He will die,”_ she swears.

Andrew uncorks the bottle. “I said, _run._ ”

She turns and flees, but like any good villain, can’t resist parting words. “Tell Junior Lola says hello.”

 

 

He turns his phone on. There’s over fifty texts and at least a dozen missed calls. He bypasses all of them when he sees a series of texts with Neil’s name at the top.

He’d given Neil the phone on the roof weeks ago, a human tool for a man now forced to play at human. Neil’s never used it once.

_hey how’d you charm a phone to stay in my shorts when I shift_

_can you teach me to do that_

_can you also pick me up_

_I got birdnapped and I think I’m in virginia_

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> birdnapped is totally a word


	4. the beginning of the end

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> see the end notes for a warning about character death (spoilers)
> 
> also this is the chapter featuring Georgie's art!! it's for my absolute favorite scene out of the entire fic and I cried when I saw it go cry too [here](http://flowerlezbian.tumblr.com/tagged/go-read-the-fic-omg%21%21%21%21%21)

Andrew doesn’t speak much during the drive home. Neil knows he’s pissed, so he doesn’t push, even if he wants nothing more than to know what happened in Maryland. Instead he leans his head against the passenger window and tries to keep his eyes open. It’s a ridiculously difficult task, not helped by his entire body aching, likely bruised and sore from his fall.

He loses the battle somewhere in North Carolina, dropping off into restless sleep. His dreams feature the sludge, blanketing the road and rising up to swallow the car whole. Neil wants to run but Andrew won’t move, staring out the windshield blankly. Neil blinks and Andrew is gone, replaced by his mother in the driver’s seat. She screams _run run run_ but there is nowhere to run, everything outside the windows just sludge. Neil reaches for her and she is Andrew again, Andrew with a hand pressed to his abdomen, with a mouth curled in pain, with a t-shirt dampening as blood soaks through. He is Andrew with Mary’s wound and his lips form words that thunder through Neil’s head. _Your fault your fault your fault your fault your—_

Neil jerks awake to a hand clamping on his shoulder. Outside traffic flashes by, headlights specks in the dark. The radio’s murmuring about being young and in love in New York City, the blue glow of the dashboard the only light illuminating the interior of the car.

“Neil.”

He head snaps to the side. Andrew, but it’s too dark, it’s too dark to see. He smacks the roof lights on and barely catches his hands, already stretching across the space between them. He clenches his fists, bringing them slowly to his lap.

Andrew’s wearing a gray henley. No blood.

“Neil. Look at me.”

He lifts his head. It feels like it weighs a thousand pounds.

Andrew says, “Stay with me, okay? Don’t go to sleep again.”

Andrew says, “Neil, wake up!”

Andrew says, “Dammit, stay awake!”

Andrew says, “Your fault your fault _your fault your fault your fault…_ ”

 

 

He’s standing in the middle of a forest, pine nettles carpeting the ground, and that sense of knowing is back. He knows the forest should be thicker, the trees should be denser. There are gaps between them that shouldn’t be, and this he knows because through them he can see the sun is going down.

He’s eighteen, and his sun is going down.

Molten orange light bleeds through the trees, staining their leaves with autumn colors as their trunks shake with sobs. The millions of threads stretching between them quiver with tension, a delicate network holding the trees in careful place. He can only see them when he looks for them directly, razor thin and translucent and disappearing when his focus shifts. He’s never needed to see them before, and he doesn’t now either.

There are other things here, things he does need to see. Branches bowed, roots gnarled. Knotholes leaking sap like tears. He crouches to scoop up a pinecone from the dirt, rolling it around in his palm. It’s soft and blackened, half-trampled underfoot and rotted. A casualty of the curse and its hunt. Neil replaces it gently and rises to his feet. The curse came, and the curse went, and now the forest weeps.

He thinks of when he found the remnants of his bond to his mother. There’s not even that left of the wisps.

The trees heave, gasping forth great breezes that stir the nettles around Neil’s feet. Leaves shake loose from their branches and crash to the ground in droves. Overhead swathes of black darken the sky, steadily creeping westward, as the dying sun sinks lower. It splashes desperate color across the horizon to fight off the shadows gathering at the edges of the light.

Neil looks down at his hands. They’re fading, like the sun, like the strength of this forest. He has the sensation of dropping something even though he’s holding nothing.

And then one of the trees falls. It groans and it tips and its roots part from the earth as its trunk embraces the ground. The few leaves still clinging by their stems shudder and then flutter, like a last breath, down.

Ripped from their moorings, the tree’s bonds fly into a frenzy, fastening to other branches and to each other, but theirs is a chaos born with its own laws and gravity, and there is neither room nor a place for everyone.

Neil outstretches his empty hands, baring his empty arms, and the bonds attach to him, looping and winding and snaking over his skin in search of the right joint. Finally, they settle, and Neil feels their vibrations echo through every hollow cavity within him. The bonds sing a song of saviors and summoning, and the air explodes with beasts of light.

They are the beasts he knows so well, and Neil laughs and forgets his fading hands, the bonds tied to him elasticizing, giving him leeway to move and kneel among them, to frolic and greet as many of them as he can. They nudge their snouts into his back, butt their heads into his shoulders, let him stroke their velvety ears and noses. Serpents drape themselves across his shoulders to hiss in his ears and a miniature chimp hangs from his neck. He finds a mouse snug in his pocket and detangles a squirrel from the nest it’s made of his hair. He’s buried beneath a pile of warm bodies when the elk arrives, bending its graceful neck to offer its rack.

Neil grabs the base of its antlers gratefully, letting the elk leverage him up. It snuffs about his jaw before nudging him forward.

Oh. The bonds brought someone else.

The rest of the animals press against his back, insistently pushing him closer. To Andrew. When he stops short, they crowd around him, around them both, surrounding Andrew to howl and whine of their loss. The remaining trees break into their own mournful chorus—Andrew presses a hand to their bark and it rises sharply, high and discordant, before whatever thought he sends soothes their cries.

He meets Andrew’s eyes then and wishes he hadn’t. There’s so much sadness there, so much grief. The sun is setting and Neil doesn’t want it to end this way.

Except the sun is frozen, its shallow curve peeking over the horizon. The leaves are frozen, suspended in air. The branches are still, still, and the nettles refuse to budge under his paws.

Paws. He shifted. He shifted, and it all froze.

“Neil,” says Andrew. His voice sounds both different and the same in this place.

They sit down across from each other. Unlike the animals’ spectral forms, Andrew is corporeal and solid, the bottoms of his bare feet brown with dirt. He’s dressed differently than how he was in the car, what felt like ages ago. Here, he wears the orange hoodie and sweatpants he wore when he broke into Neil’s room. The memory feels inexplicably close at hand, like he could shut his eyes and he’d back there in the loft.

“I’m going to try something,” Andrew warns. He reaches into the empty space between them. A glimmering cord solidifies between his fingers, dotted with crystal droplets like dew on a spider’s web. Their proximity allows for plenty of slack on the cord, and Andrew lightly tugs until its full length shimmers into visibility, trailing over the dirt between them. He wraps one end of the cord around his wrist. Neil follows suit, placing his paw over his end.

Andrew takes a breath, and the cord shines as something travels across it.

_a forest of bonds and wisps and threads between trees rock rock where have you been rock they’re gone rock they’re gone the trees are empty and they’re losing their l e a v e s_

Oh. He recognizes the voices. They’re his, after all. It’s this place, this part of him, what Andrew felt when it greeted him. When he saw what had happened here. What was gone. The grief he glimpsed in Andrew’s eyes earlier pulses across the bond.

Andrew closes his eyes, the bond bright and brilliant as he sends all his knowing to Neil, all the secrets and mechanics of the curse he hoarded and kept. He sends necromancy and Wesninski and all his sleepless nights, the way his gut sank when Neil grinned and called his father dead. He sends _Lola says hello_ and his anger slips through unbidden, buried in it _I burned him for you_.

Neil absorbs all this knowing and shares his own—how he’s going to survive this.

_I shift, and it freezes. I shift, and my life stops draining away. I shift, and I live._

  
He comes to slowly, or at least he tries. It feels like he can’t come to at all, trapped on the bridge of sleep and wake with no motor skills and half his senses missing. He tries to move his arms and legs, tries to reach out—for what, he doesn’t know, just anything—but he can’t even figure out where his limbs are attached to him. It reminds him of when he used to shift in his sleep when he was little, and he’d wake up disoriented in the dark, not knowing which way was up or what body he was in.

He calls out for his mom in a voice that rasps, scraping across his sandpaper throat. His tongue is a dried out husk in his mouth. Careful hands tip cold water down his throat. They keep pressing the glass to his lips insistently even when he’s no longer thirsty, a familiar voice barking that he is going to hydrate whether he likes it or not, and when did WymackKevin get here, he wonders. Something coarse and woven wraps around his wrist—

“Does that help?”

Neil blinks, the room coming into sharp focus around him. Abby perches on the edge of a cushion next to him, her fingers on his wrist next to the bracelet, monitoring his pulse. Kevin hunches over in an armchair, rubbing his bloodshot eyes. Wymack stands behind Kevin, hand on his shoulder. And Andrew—he sits at Neil’s feet, legs folded, blond hair brushing over his closed eyes, head bent. One of his hands encloses Neil’s ankle.

Right. They didn’t go to the shop. They decided to come here, the home of a woman Andrew calls Bee who Neil has never met before. They were the last ones to arrive even with Andrew breaking every traffic law possible. Neil had wanted to know—something, it’s fuzzy now. Probably about Bee. He’d shifted back when Andrew killed the car, and then he couldn’t get out of it, his limbs too heavy and sluggish to operate. His head too heavy and sluggish to work. He remembers his cheek against Andrew’s back but not how it got there, or how he got inside the house, propped up on this floral couch.

He rubs his thumb over the bracelet and clears his throat. “Yeah, it helps a lot.”

He tries to kick his foot out, just to nudge Andrew’s thigh to wake him up, but his grip around Neil’s ankle prevents any movement other than flexing his toes. “Hey, Andrew.”

No response, not even acknowledgement that Neil’s spoken.

“Andrew.” He touches his fingertips to the crown of Andrew’s head to give him a light shove and the bond flares in his head, both their heads.

Andrew starts, eyes flashing open. In them Neil can see the forest bathed in red and orange and gold. He averts his gaze. His time, their time, in the forest he remembers just fine, and he remembers what Andrew had pushed along the bond. What the curse really is. What he’d kept from Neil.

Neil had been calm then, only because of the place and because his survival was at stake. Now is different. Now he has a bracelet to hold the curse at bay, and nothing to check his anger, swiftly rising.

He gets to his feet, Abby’s hands fluttering nervously at his back. He looks down at Andrew bracketed between his legs. “We need to talk.”

Andrew stands. “Let’s go outside.”

Neil heads for the door without another word. Andrew falls in step behind him. He hears a low murmur and a rustle of fabric that tells him Wymack stopped Kevin from accompanying them.

“Be back inside by the time the tea is done,” Abby calls. “And nothing strenuous.”

It shouldn’t be strenuous for anything but his vocal cords.

They exit the house, take in the quaint porch with its potted plants and rocking chair, and wordlessly agree _not here_. Too little privacy from those inside, too many things breakable.

They amble on down the block. Bee lives in a quiet, suburban neighborhood, and pools of yellow light cast from porches and street lamps pave the way. Andrew leads them to the corner and sits down on the edge of the curb. Neil lowers himself down a foot away, clenching his fists, trying to pick out what words to say and in what order. Everything’s a tangled mess in his head, but one thing is clear. He takes a steadying breath.

“I need to hear you say it,” Neil says. He clears his throat. “I need to hear it.”

Andrew looks him in the eye and says loudly, clearly, finally, “The curse. It’s necromancy. It’s your father.”

_It’s_

_Your_

_Father_

And for a second, Neil thinks of running.

He thinks of shifting. Of a jaguar’s dappled pelt and powerful legs. Of a jaguar’s claws.

He thinks of screaming at Andrew. Of saying nothing, just severing the new bond between them without a word. (And it would hurt Neil, but oh, if he knows Andrew at all, would it hurt him too.)

And for a second, Neil thinks he’s Nathaniel again. (Nathaniel, Nathaniel—he’s the one with the father. He’s the son of the Butcher with notches on his ribs from a cleaver.) For a second.

And then he thinks of his mother, of the blood on her hands and in her teeth when they’d run from Seattle. She’d killed him, and Neil will _kill him again_ if he has to. For her, and for himself.

At some point Neil got up from the curb, because he’s standing now, forehead pressed to the cold metal of a street lamp post. Andrew’s still sitting exactly where he was before. It’s—strange, to say the least, to think of Andrew and trust in the same vein in the middle of _this_ conversation, but Andrew must have trusted Neil wasn’t going to run if he didn’t even move.

If he can trust him not to run, _why_ keep this secret?

“Why?” Neil faces Andrew, hooking his arm around the post. “Why wouldn’t you just tell me?”

Andrew shifts, drawing one of his knees to his chest. “I wanted to end it. For you, and for me. And then you were so happy he was dead—I knew I was going to Maryland, so I thought I could fix it and you’d be fine and I could tell you when it didn’t matter anymore. But then Lola showed up.”

Lola. Of course she survived. Of course she’s behind this. He’d worried about her coming after him for revenge for a while, but ultimately dismissed her as directionless without his father. Of course in her blind devotion she’d commit to resurrection, whatever it took to get him back.

 _I wanted to end it._ Neil understands that. He’d be a hypocrite if he pretended he didn’t. But it was never going to not matter.

These are people Neil knows. This is a city he’s intimately familiar with. He never should’ve been on the outside.

“I should’ve gone with you.”

Andrew shrugs. “I didn’t want any distractions.”

Neil can’t help himself. The opportunity is there. “I’m distracting, am I?”

Andrew answers, flippant as can be, “Very distracting. I never would have been able to take my eyes off you in order to tear down your family tomb if you’d have been there.”

“You destroyed the tomb?”

He nods. “I burned your father.”

Neil swings around the pole, eyes stinging. He’s still pissed, but—but burning his father goes a long way to forgiveness. He tries to surreptitiously wipe his eyes with the collar of his shirt, but judging from Andrew’s shoes scraping across the sidewalk as he awkwardly stands his subtlety could use some work. He circles back around, releasing the lamp post.

“You should have told me,” Neil says. “All of it.”

“Yes,” Andrew agrees. He adds, “Do you have any more murderous family members that might be involved with my case?”

Neil considers. The Hatford grimoire still sits in his duffel. If he’s going to be living in other skins for a while, he should probably consult the grimoire first.

“None out to murder me,” he settles on. “Lola, she didn’t–she didn’t hurt you, did she?”

“No. She didn’t hurt me.”

Neil exhales. “Good. You did a stupid thing, but I don’t want you dead.”

The bond thrums in Neil’s chest, and an image rises up behind his eyes of a ginger cat leaping from a club railing, the memory tinged through the lens of a similar sentiment.

“We’re both going to get tired of this,” Neil warns.

“You’re going to be a penguin, so you won’t be able to complain.”

Neil frowns. “Why would I be a penguin? It’s July. Or August now, whatever.”

“It’s the type of idiotic thing you’d do,” says Andrew, brushing past Neil. “Come on, the tea should be ready.”

They slip back inside, Neil returning to his place on the couch and Andrew, for some reason, to the floor between Neil’s feet. Abby’s asking him how the bracelet’s working when a blond woman appears with a tray from the kitchen. She’s barefoot, dressed in flannel pajamas despite the weather. She sets the tray down on a coffee table that had been pushed aside then starts passing out mismatched mugs, forcing Wymack to accept one even as he grumbles and holding it under Kevin’s nose until the scent rouses him from his stupor. Abby thanks her graciously. Andrew takes two, and Neil puzzles for a moment over why until she extends a hand for Neil to shake.

“I’m Betsy Dobson,” she introduces. Bee.

He shakes warily. “Neil Josten.”

Andrew coughs, wiping his mouth as some of his drink dribbles over his lips. Neil isn’t sure what exactly he finds funny but kicks him hard for good measure. Andrew captures his foot, setting both mugs down on the carpet.

Betsy watches this with a smile. “I’m glad to finally meet you, Neil, though I wish it could be under better circumstances.”

Neil nods. “Yes, the whole dying bit really puts a damper on things.”

Wymack groans.

Undeterred by deathbed humor, Betsy sinks down into the couch on the other side of him. She explains, “I’ve had dealings with similar cases in the past. Now that time is your main concern, David and Abby thought it prudent that I evaluate you, provided you’re willing, of course.”

“You’re a psychic?” Neil questions. Seems a little odd to be visiting one now. He knows he has to shift. He glances at Wymack.

“Betsy’s a diviner. Empathy, hypersensitivity to fate and all that. She’s also a close friend.” Wymack waves his hand. “She’s going to give us a deadline—shit.”

“That was an awful joke,” Kevin condemns.

Wymack sighs. “I didn’t mean—”

“If you didn’t say it I would have,” Andrew says from the floor.

“Boys,” Abby snaps. “Andrew, give Neil his tea.”

Andrew hands it over dutifully. All too aware he’ll be subject to Abby’s scrutiny until he complies, Neil takes a sip. He nearly drops the mug when he tastes rosemary. Andrew squeezes his foot.

Is this apology tea? Did he tell Betsy to put rosemary in it to try to bribe his way to forgiveness? Neil narrows his eyes, glancing down at Andrew’s blond head.

Whatever. It’s his tea now. He closes his eyes and drinks deeply, letting the warmth suffuse his body and chase the drowsy cold away.

When he finishes, Betsy places her fingertips on his temples and asks him to breathe along with her counting. In for four, hold, out for four. In for four, hold, out for four. That easy, that simple. She’ll do all the heavy lifting. He concentrates on her voice, on his chest expanding and contracting, and

the  
world  
falls  
quiet.

Somewhere in between the breaths she tells him to imagine a positive future.

He doesn’t really know where to start with that.

“That’s okay,” she says. Oops is he talking out loud? “You are, yes. It’s perfectly normal. If you don’t know where to start, perhaps think about what you want, and envision those things within your daily life. You can build from there.”

What he wants?

“Think about the smallest thing you want, if it’s hard to imagine,” Betsy suggests. What he wants. Free of what he feels he can have, free of what he feels he should have.

What he wants. He wants to live. He wants to be free of the curse. He wants to be free of his father. He wants his own project to work on in the annex and his own shift to work in the shop, so he doesn’t feel like he’s stuck in this freeloading limbo state. He wants to beat Kevin at the obstacle course and to make it through the Games without passing out. He wants to be the best, or as close as he can come when he can never be Kevin.

He wants to show everyone his magic, and still, _still,_ he wants to share his magic with Andrew. He wants to find a way to return whatever Andrew has lost to him. He wants these stupid things they do to be done together, instead of for each other in a way that doesn’t seem to help at all. He wants to hold Andrew’s hand. That seems like something small they can build from.

He wants to run, run, run, in all of his skins, in every skin, run as long and as fast and as hard as he can and then run home. Run home to an Atlas who sets his compass so he won’t ever get lost in the world. Who will come find him in the middle of the woods if he does anyway.

“Thank you, Neil,” Betsy says. “You can open your eyes now.”

He does. Everyone is staring, including Andrew, head tipped back on the couch cushion, looking at Neil upside down. Neil very carefully does not move his knee closer to Andrew’s head.

At least the whole team wasn’t here to hear that. Hear him admit _he wants to hold Andrew’s hand._ It’s bad enough that Andrew heard it. He pointedly does not meet anyone’s eyes.

He addresses Betsy. “What did you see?”

“I saw a cleaver.”  
  
Fear jolts through him, but he steamrolls past it. If he wants to have this conversation he’s going to have to be as cool about it as possible.

“Makes sense for him to try to kill me with the cleaver, I guess,” Neil muses. “A fun little throwback. What else was there, Betsy?”

“A fun little—what? Are you talking about your father?” Wymack interrupts.

“He’s dead, but he’s still trying to kill me,” Neil says, and he really doesn’t even have to affect nonchalance this time. “Nothing new.”

“Jesus Christ,” says Wymack.

“You were saying?” Neil prompts Betsy.

She picks up right where they left off. “I understand you’ve found a way to prevent the curse draining your life force?”

“Shifting,” Neil confirms.

“Wait, how exactly does that work?” Abby asks. “I know the curse was draining his traditional magic rather than his shapeshifting, but wouldn’t his life force still be his life force, even in a different skin?”

She looks between Andrew and Betsy, and Neil’s honestly glad to be overlooked. They could probably offer a better explanation than _it’ll work because my animal bonds told me._

Andrew, still staring at Neil, mimes handing Betsy a baton.

She shakes her head fondly but accepts it. “It seems Neil’s father is only interested in the magic and spirit of his bloodline. The curse won’t draw the life from any of the animals Neil shifts into because shifting is not something his father’s spirit can do. The curse doesn’t recognize Neil’s spirit in another shape. It’s like turning off an appliance. The curse is still plugged in, but it’s not actively operating.”

Abby nods, satisfied by the answer. Betsy smiles at her, then continues, “Neil, I also saw, or rather felt, I should say, a significance about your birthday.”

“What kind of significance?”

“Like a death day,” Andrew drawls.

Betsy purses her lips. “Yes and no. It could mean yes, that’s when you’ll die, but it could also mean the end of the curse. It can’t go on forever. It has an expiration date like everything else.”

“Why my birthday?”

“If you die on the same day you were born, it would close the cycle of your life in a perfect circle. Fact. Magic loves symmetry and rewards it graciously. Generally assumed to be fact by the magical academic community. Your father would be reborn with twice the power he possessed in his first life. However, if they failed to revive him, it would close the opportunity forever, and you would be reborn too, in your own way. Clean of any curses. Theory.”

Kevin speaks for the first time, voice raspy. “Then, theoretically, they’re going to be waiting for Neil’s birthday too.”

“I can see why you need a degree for this shit,” Wymack mutters. “No offense to your work, Betsy.”

“None taken, David. By the time I got my Masters in magical theory, I thought it was shit too.”

Neil nudges Andrew’s head with his knee. “Are you certified in cursebreaking?”

Andrew pinches his calf. “What do you think?”

“I think your lack of certification is why I broke my own curse—ow, stop pinching me!” Neil shakes his leg, trying to dislodge Andrew’s vicious fingers.

“Boys.” They shrink under Abby’s stink eye. “Thank Betsy for her hospitality.”

Neil shakes Betsy’s hand again, thanking her for her insight and the tea. He lingers at the door, watching Andrew say goodbye. He actually smiles at something Betsy says, enduring her shoulder squeeze with exasperated fondness, then promising to be back later. Wymack drags Neil off before Andrew joins them on the porch.

“You’re riding with me. The two of you get into too much trouble.”

 

 

Nicky and Aaron are waiting for them at the shop, Aaron slumped over the counter and snoring. Nicky drops his phone when Neil steps inside the front door.

“Neil!” Nicky runs around the counter, taking Neil by the shoulders. “You’re not a raven!”

“I’m not a raven,” Neil confirms.

Nicky glances over Neil’s shoulder. “Did you and Andrew just get back?”

“No, we stopped at Betsy Dobson’s.”

“Betsy?” Nicky lowers his voice. “What’d she tell you?”

Neil goes with the simplest explanation. It’s dawn, he hasn’t slept since he passed out after Gorilla’s assassination attempt, and he’s hoping if he answers all his questions Nicky won’t harass him for the remaining minutes he’s human. Abby warned him the bracelet’s buffer wouldn’t last forever. “That if I didn’t die on my birthday, I’d be good.”

Nicky beams. “That’s great! Right?”

“Yeah, great. I’m going to go sleep now.” Neil jerks his thumb in the direction of the stairs. “See you later.”

Nicky waves. Aaron blearily lifts his head from the counter and shoots him a glare.

He manages to sneak upstairs without any more intervention. He kicks off his shoes, crawling up onto his bed. He strews the sheets around, arranging his pillows to give it a pseudo nestden feel. He picks up what he thinks is his blanket, dragging it up from the foot of the bed, but there are too many seams under his fingers and he holds it up to the dim moonlight filtering through the windows.

It’s his jacket. The one he’d sent Kevin away to get before Riko showed up.

“Neil.” Wymack, standing at the door to his office. His voice is as gruff as ever, but his eyes are watchful. “Come here a sec.”

Neil climbs out of the nest, slipping inside Wymack’s office. Wymack’s scribbling on several sheets of paper.

“What are you doing?”

Wymack speaks around the pen cap held between his teeth. “Changing the false birth date you gave me on your paperwork.”

Neil winces. “Are you going to need my real name too?”

Wymack removes the cap from his teeth. “As far as I’m concerned, Neil Josten is your real name.”

Neil’s mouth dries up. Suddenly he’s back at the beginning, sitting in this office for the first time, not knowing what to do with the chances Wymack was laying in his lap.

Wymack finishes up with the paperwork, then crosses over to sit beside Neil in the two chairs. His tattoos curl over his arms, forming thick cuffs at his wrists.

“Do you still have the key to the annex?” Neil fishes the card out of his pocket. Wymack takes it, holding it between two of his fingers. “You won’t be able to carry it around when you shift this way. I can transfer it to a tattoo, though.”

“Do it.”

The card bursts into flame, crumbling to ash Wymack rubs over the pads of his fingers. Neil holds out his hand. Wymack smears the ash over Neil’s palm, and it absorbs into his skin, reappearing in the shape of a key, stark and permanent as ink.

“Andrew given you keys yet?” Wymack asks.

Neil runs his thumb over the key. “Is he supposed to?”

Wymack shrugs. “You’re in his circle.”

Neil gawks. “Since when?”

“He took you into his circle when he agreed to be your cursebreaker.” He shakes his head, dragging his hands down his face. “I’m not going to be your messenger. If you’re gonna be a thing, you need to work on your communication issues.”

Neil denies, “We’re not a thing.”

Neil has never seen a man look as awkward and uncomfortable as Wymack when he replies, “But you want to hold his hand?”

Neil expected this from Kevin before Wymack, in the form of some inquiry about how anything between Andrew and Neil could affect team dynamics and how they could potentially use this to their advantage.

“Is it that surprising?” Neil asks.

Wymack stares at him long and hard. He doesn’t smile, but the harsh lines around his mouth soften, maybe. “No. No, it’s not.”

 

 

Neil trots down the stairs the next morning into the shop. He sniffs the air. He’s always hungrier on four legs, and sometimes Andrew brings breakfast to their morning sessions. Not that he usually shares—Neil’s just gotten good at stealing his food. But the air is still and undisturbed, the only scents the leftover imprints from last night.

The lights are off in the back room.

Right. Andrew doesn’t need to break his curse anymore.

This should feel like a good thing. He buries his disappointment the way a dog buries a bone, coming back to it over and over again.

 

 

It takes Kevin a week to work up the nerve to ask Neil about his short time in the flock.

He’s in his human skin while Abby mutilates fruit in a blender, mixing him a special smoothie to keep his energy up. She says his metabolism is faster than ever and wants to monitor his caloric intake, concerned about long term weight loss with him expending so much energy constantly shifting. It doesn’t feel like he’s losing energy. He shifts and then has basically nothing to do all day. But Abby insists, so he waits at the counter with his bracelet, trying to massage the ache out of his temples.

Kevin slides onto the stool next to him. His wet hair drips onto the collar of his shirt.

“Morning practice?” Neil asks. Envy bleeds through his voice, but he can’t help it. He’d kill to be at the arena every morning. Specifically _Lola._

“With barely half our team,” Kevin gripes.

“Where was everyone?”

Kevin ticks them off on his fingers. “Aaron disappeared last night and didn’t even show up, Andrew dropped me off and left, and Nicky was such a mess worrying about them he might as well have not been there either. Not to mention _you_.”

“Me?”

They were the ones who wrote Neil off the team. Told him to focus on beating the curse, it was up to him now. Stopped picking him up for practice.

“You could at least drill,” Kevin complains. “Instead of moping around here.”

“You’re the ones acting like I’m off the team!” Neil exclaims.

Kevin recoils from the accusation. “You are _not_ off the team.”

Neil jumps up so fast his vision blacks out for an instant. “I’m not?”

Take a break from the team, they’d said. Take care of yourself. Come back when you’re free. Wymack himself had assumed Neil wouldn’t be at practice. They were kicking him off the team but he’s _not_ off the team?

Kevin’s intensity blocks out everywhere else in the room. There’s only Kevin and the passion driving his words. “In no universe will I let all our work go to waste. You are staying on this team and you are going to be right beside me accepting a gold medal when they open the Olympics to magical athletes. _I swear it_.”

The _Olympics_. Neil’s breath catches at the enormity of that promise. Twenty years after the Games started, and they’d gone a long way to bridging the gap, but magic still wasn’t permitted in the real Olympics, despite the huge part it played in the original event in Greece. The mess of the twentieth century had instilled such deep distrust in the public; they may no longer be hunted and burned at stakes, but they were still widely regarded as obvious cheats in any competition, judged harshly and scrutinized within an inch of their lives. Tetsuji and Kayleigh had founded the Games as an answer to that, titled it mockingly in accordance, but Kayleigh had always been outspoken about what she hoped to achieve.

_“We are giving ourselves a chance for as long as they refuse to give us one.”_

Kevin is determined to see it through where his mother couldn’t. To demand a chance and get it. To stand on that podium with a gold medallion around his neck and be unapologetic about who he is. And he wants Neil there with him.

“Kevin,” Neil says, but he can’t think of anything else. His heart thunders in his chest.

“So show up to practice,” Kevin finishes, settling back onto the stool. He picks at the plastic carton the strawberries had come in. “I said I’d make you the best. Don’t—don’t take that away from me.”

This is something different. This isn’t about whether Neil’s on the team anymore.

“I was cursed when we made that deal,” Neil reminds him.

Kevin shakes his head. He waits for Abby to blast the blender, then says, barely audible over its screaming, “That’s not what I meant.”

What else—

Kevin’s face in the loft window, eyes blown wide in terror, clutching Neil’s jacket to him like a life preserver. Watching Neil fly away. Watching the flock absorb him, _Riko_ order him, minutes after he’d called Neil brother.

“I could hear his voice. Whispering in my head. I knew if I shifted I’d go right back to the flock so _I didn’t move_. I didn’t breathe. I just watched you be taken. I stood there for an hour before Nicky finally got out of the traffic jam he’d been stuck in.”

Kevin at the window. Jean’s broken wings. Neil swallows. “How did you do it? You must’ve been in so much pain—but you did it.”

Kevin smiles faintly. “My mother taught me everything about bonds. How powerful they are. How meaningful. How to forge them, make them stronger. And how to break them.” He laughs, a quiet laugh, full of admiration and the ache of grief. “She thought they were important, especially to shifters. Not just the bonds to our skins, but our bonds to each other. She thought they were the key to changing the world.”

What different women they were. Kayleigh and Mary. What different women, but both with fates they didn’t deserve.

Abby cuts off the blender. Neil suspects she was only running it this long to let Kevin have his moment. She slides one tall glass in front of Neil and starts measuring protein mix for Kevin.

“He’ll consider you his now. He’ll come again. For both of us. You need to know what I know.”

Neil sips the smoothie. “Then you’re going to have to shift. I’m going to be an animal ninety percent of the time, and we can’t communicate cross-species. Cross human-animal species.”

Kevin’s mouth twists, but he doesn’t protest. “Tomorrow. Show up to practice. We’ll work from there.”

Neil gulps down the rest of the smoothie, shifting into a goat before the bracelet gives out.

 

 

The rest of the team is surprised to see him at practice the first few days. Eventually they get used to the sight of random wildlife making laps around the track while they scrimmage. After a week Wymack doesn’t even attempt to enforce his Neil-on-the-bleachers rule. After a month he’s actively using Neil in speed and blocking drills, though he won’t budge on allowing Neil to play.

“Gorilla’s allowed on the track,” Dan grumbles. Neil whinnies in agreement. Wymack runs them extra hard.

It’s painful having to sit out, but at least he isn’t relegated to the stands like a spectator. He watches from Wymack’s box, where Team Masters get a special view of the proceedings in the dome through the eyes of minuscule organic drones constantly buzzing around. Team Masters technically have the right to make substitutions or switch players’ positions, but Wymack rarely does so, what with nine people max being allowed per team on the track and them having exactly nine people.

With Neil gone, Renee fills in as offensive dealer while Dan takes over the other runner position. She’s good, but she’s trained and built for being a dealer, for close combat and endurance. She isn’t as agile as Neil or adaptive as Kevin, so they lose their speed advantage, though she holds her own in confrontations over the orbs. Andrew’s also stuck in the Keeper’s Box, unable to render aid even if wanted to. It makes their play rougher, bloodier, no buffer to fall back on. Losses are hard and wins are harder, and it’s always close.

The Halloween tournament is particularly dirty, and Neil’s all over the glass walls, barking and slobbering. Wymack threatens to kick him outside if he doesn’t calm down.

“It’s his service dog,” Abby lies, when one of the arena officials comes over to check on the commotion. “David gets agitated, the dog gets agitated, you know.”

“Service dog?” Wymack hisses. “What would I need a service dog for?”

“Early hearing loss isn’t uncommon in men your age.”

The team manages. They scrape by, but they make it, qualifying for the higher level tournaments. They celebrate the news by cancelling practice, everyone ecstatic not only by their advancement but at getting to leave the arena before nine. Dan’s dumping all the gear from the paddock into the arena’s laundry chute, Matt’s trying to do parkour off the fence, Nicky’s draped over Aaron’s shoulders, and Allison’s snapping about a dozen pictures of Renee lying on the grass when it happens.

Neil’s perched on one of the fence posts in the form of a crow. Kevin can shift and shift back to his discretion now, but the raven is so ingrained in him he’s lost all his other shapes and can’t find them. They’re trying to find the crow first, since it’s as similar to a raven but not a raven as you can get. Neil periodically caws in case the familiar call triggers the shift.

Kevin sits stubbornly on the track, feathers rippling over his human skin. He flops one leg onto the turf; something shiny near his shoe catches Neil’s eye. And suddenly he’s airborne. He dives from the fence, completely ignoring Kevin as he sweeps the shiny object up, circles the track, then lands to greedily appraise his prize. It’s metallic, and it crumples and tears under his beak. The sun glints off its wrinkled surface.

“Whoa, Neil! Whatcha got there?”

It’s garbled humanspeak. He hops a few feet away, pecking at his treasure. The humans continue to approach. Envious. Planning to _steal_. He takes it in his talons and flaps over to the paddock rail, shredding it into pieces.

 _Neil._ But this time it’s not humanspeak, it’s a warble, coming from the one on the ground. _Neil, it’s foil_.

Foil. Foil, he knows what that is. Aluminum foil. Tin foil. It’s a human thing.

He’s human, his first skin.

He forgot.

That’s just the first time.

It happens more and more frequently as autumn slips into winter. His instincts will take over and he’ll forget who he is for a moment, for a minute. Sometimes he realizes on his own. Other times whoever notices has to jar him back to reality. Abby searches for new ways to maintain his human state so he can have breaks longer than a few minutes at a time. The bracelet burns out, as do several of its brethren. None of them last long, and soon their lifespans are shorter than the time it takes Abby to find something new. They grant him coherency, at least, though the latest batch do nothing for the pain.

It becomes risky for Neil to go out. Around the first of December, snowfall closes most of the surrounding businesses. Wymack stays open, in case anyone needs any emergency supplies, but he lets Matt and Neil go out and wrestle in the fresh layer of untouched snow over the empty road. Neil wears the skin of an arctic wolf so he actually has a chance against Matt, but the wolf is a mistake. The wolf catches a scent and bolts, and by the time Neil regains a sense of his mind, he’s hopelessly lost. Wymack and Andrew find him eventually, but they all decide as a precaution Neil should stick close to home.

Neil makes the decision to stick to domesticated animals, too. They seem easier to keep a grip on, less free-spirited, less eager to return to the wild.

He spends much of his time as the ginger cat. Sleeping away the days helps pass the time, and he’s allowed down in the shop as a cat, free to socialize or blatantly ignore people as he chooses. Roaming eases some of the restlessness he feels when confined to the apartment or in the form of a larger animal.

It’s easier to be indoors as a cat, too. As a cat, he doesn’t feel the pull. Any other skin, he yearns for fresh air and fresh earth, the wards a prison crawling over his furfeathershide. As a cat, he just doesn’t care. He doesn’t have to care about a lot of things.

(The apathy is almost enough to drown out the ache. The constant, constant ache.)

He shifts out of the deer he spent the night in for his obligatory morning checkup, swallowing the newest tincture designed to prolong his life with routine vacancy. He’s created his own rules now to replace his mother’s. Rule, really. He only has one. _Be inscrutable._ Hide how bad it tastes. Hide how much it hurts.

Hide how much you’re terrified.

Hiding, of course, is muscle memory. It may not have ever been in his nature, but his mother damn well made sure it was close to instinct. It’s much harder to hide, though, when he’s being seen.

They don’t leave him alone for long. It reminds him of the Games almost, the way they make “taking care” of him a team effort.

The days Wymack’s at the shop, he invites Neil to hang out in his office. Mainly Neil listens to him bitch and groan, about the shop, about finances, about the arena and how he’s the only competent person there. Sometimes Wymack blows off his paperwork and they’ll watch a broadcast of a match or go over stats, and Wymack will ask for his opinion and he’ll have to point his paw, purr, growl. Wymack swears but never stops speaking to him like he’s human. It helps him remember he is one.

When Wymack isn’t there, at least one of them completely forgoes their actual job to keep him company. He’ll destroy training dummies in the back room with Matt, practice shifting with Kevin, boss the others around with Dan. She shows him her photo collection, and he’s shocked to find himself already a main star. Allison sneaks him out once in the form of a teacup purse chihuahua. She stress-shops apparently, and she threatened to drop Neil off at the pound if he protested her buying him more clothes.

Renee’s company surprises him the most. He’d been so unnerved by her before, but her honesty gave way to a simple truce, a content peace. She meditates, and he sits and watches. Her faith is still a little unbelievable, considering the literal witchcraft surrounding them, but something about the atmosphere she produces makes him comfortable anyway. Her serenity is alike enough to the companionship he craves—

The drawback of being a cat. When he does truly want something, it’s ten times more frustrating when he doesn’t get it.

Renee helps with the frustration. In return, he helps her study herbs and teaches her street secrets as best he can.

Nicky, on the other hand, surprises him the least. He chatters and laughs and maintains an unwavering front of good cheer. Sometimes his enthusiasm annoys Neil, but on another level he enjoys the background noise. It’s a reminder, and it supplies a sense of normalcy to everything, like if Nicky’s talking, the world hasn’t collapsed yet.

But there are days, too, where the pain is strong, and even changing his skin can’t escape it.

He tries to ignore it, but eventually the bustle of the shop overwhelms him, too many people and too many foreign hands reaching out to pet him where he lounges in his box on the counter. He leaps down, winding through legs to the back room. Abby’s sorting through inventory, and though he pauses to let her scratch behind his ears, it’s still too much, too busy. He wants—he needs a place of peace. He needs a rock upon which to endure. He needs.

The annex door opens when he bats at it, recognizing the glyph on his paw. Neil slinks through. He makes a slow lap about the room first. Briefly he distracts himself chasing one of the shadows, but seriously hunting requires more energy than he has to give, so he lets it go, and lets his pretenses go with it. He trots over to the work tables, hops onto the bench, and then springs up onto the table itself. He settles into the least painful position, resting his chin on his paws. And he stares.

Andrew, to his credit, ignores him for a solid hour, tensely continuing his work. This is fine for Neil. It gives him time to unabashedly study Andrew, to soak him in and reacquaint himself with the lines of his face, the play of his fingers. He’s seen Andrew maybe once a week these past few months, and Andrew always manages to show up when he’s a freaking moose or zebra or cow, some large animal that makes meaningful one-on-one interactions nigh impossible. Andrew imposed the distance, and Neil’s the one breaking it, but he can’t bring himself to feel as bad as he should.

He thought he wanted Andrew to say something. _Goodbye_ or _don’t give up you idiot_. But sitting here—with him, it’s enough. He’s missed Andrew, a kind of smaller pain that spawned greater things, frustration and longing and an underlying sadness.

He wonders if Andrew feels sad, or just tired. _Tired_ is his consistent response to Renee, whenever she asks. According to what she told Neil, anyway. He expressed interest once, and she’s collected harmless comments for him ever since.

Comments like the fact he’s been working on something, and he refuses to tell anyone what it is. He toils relentlessly. Wymack even dragged a cot down from his office for the extra late nights Andrew spends too often. Looking at it now, Neil still can’t tell what is yet, other than a hunk of rock Andrew’s steadily chipping away at. (To be fair, he doesn’t pay the rock that much attention.)

Andrew frowns. He sets down his tools, finally looking at Neil. Neil meows in greeting.

Andrew is not impressed. “A cat. Really.”

Neil bristles, yowling indignantly. Andrew folds his arms.

“Does that make you feel better?” he sneers.

Neil does his best approximation of a cat-shrug. It’s pathetic enough that Andrew drops his hostility, rounding his shoulders, leaning forward on the table.

“It’s bad today, isn’t it?” he asks, voice low. Neil mewls an affirmative, tilting his head in question. How did he know? Andrew averts his eyes as he confesses, “I can feel it still. The curse.”

Even though they haven’t had a session in weeks. Neil isn’t sure how this information is supposed to make him feel when he aligns it with the timeline of the past few months. Andrew, knowing, and Andrew, still leaving him alone. He thinks if it’s supposed to hurt he’s reached his threshold. He’s numb to everything beyond.

Andrew pushes his materials to the side, sliding his arms onto the table. He rests his chin on his right forearm, putting him at eye level with Neil. Neil creeps closer. Andrew huffs. “I don’t know why you want to be around me of all people when you’re in pain.”

A surge of emotions rushes through Neil, unfailingly human in their complexity. The cat forces them into separate pieces to process: anger and sorrow and guilt and biggest of all, a sense of protectiveness. It’s too much to convey with any of the noises he can make, too easily mistaken, and he can’t let Andrew continue this mistake. He _can’t._

He feels for the thread tying them together, traps the bond beneath his paw. Andrew’s eyebrows shoot up, his surprise filtering down its length. Neil looks Andrew in the eye and pushes it all down the bond. _Andrew Andrew you’re the only person I want to be around when I’m in pain the person I always want to be around._

Andrew shudders. He buries his face in his arms for a long moment. Neil waits with the patience he seeded out of necessity when he first came here, now cultivated and sprouting.

When Andrew lifts his head again, he doesn’t respond through the bond. He raises his hand to Neil’s coat, his fingers sinking in to rub away the ache in his neck, and a deep purr rumbles out of his throat before Neil catches it. Neil stiffens, struck by fear Andrew will pull away, but Andrew only flicks his ear and continues, a faint smile gracing his face.

Up close Neil can see the different flecks of color in Andrew’s hazel eyes, the greens and yellows almost catlike himself. He decides Andrew’s eyes might be his favorite and dedicates himself to watching them for as long as he can.

Too soon his eyes start to droop, Andrew’s petting lulling him to sleep. He fights it, stubbornly prying his eyes back open every time they slip closed without his permission.

“Sleep, Neil,” Andrew murmurs, slumped over the table, a hand in Neil’s fur, relaxed too in his own right.

Neil tries to growl but then Andrew hits a spot behind his ear and it dissolves into a useless purr. Andrew smirks, and there’s no way Neil can let himself sleep now, when he’s meeting all of Andrew’s expressions again.

Andrew runs his fingers down Neil’s spine. “I won’t go anywhere.”

Neil tugs on the bond. _Be around yes no_

Andrew hums, and this time, he sends a pulse back. _Yes yes yes_

Neil nips at one of his fingers. Andrew scratches at that spot with a vengeance, and Neil succumbs to sleep with laughter in his mouth.

(He wakes up, and Andrew’s still there, nose tucked into the crook of his elbow.)

 

 

 _BONDS GO BOTH WAYS._  
_-THAT SEEMS OBVIOUS._  
_YOU’D BE SURPRISED HOW OFTEN WE FORGET._

 

 

“When you shift, why do you have red fur?”

“Because I have red hair?”

“You have red hair? Neil! We’re going to have to redo your entire wardrobe now.”

 

 

Andrew doesn’t work on his rock project any less than he did before. He doesn’t go to extra lengths to interact with the others or with Neil. But he is around, at least in their bond, pushing little feelings Neil’s way. Something he found funny, something that left him satisfied, excess frustration Neil can get rid of more easily than he can. It ensures Andrew is very much present, not this hollow space, a hole to trip into.

He’s around in the annex too, but Neil doesn’t intrude unless Andrew invites him. He’s clearly dedicated to this project, and he’s called Neil a distraction more than once. If Andrew invites him, it’s normally when Neil’s hiding out in the back room at the same time Andrew emerges for food. Andrew will eat, walk back to the annex, and then pause at the door, holding it open as if to ask if Neil’s coming. Neil darts after him every time.

It’s the cat. The cat is definitely growing on Andrew.

(He knows because at Thanksgiving, after they all stuff themselves and pass out on the couch, Andrew wrinkles his nose at Neil’s golden retriever form taking up an entire cushion and says, “Can’t you go back to being a cat?”)

(It’s meaningful, coming from him.)

 

 

December is wet and cold, unrepentant rain turning to sleet as it falls. The roads gleam slickly with black ice. Frost spreads it fingers over the window panes, and Neil’s breath hangs in white clouds. The shop’s heating system chugs and belches enough to keep the main floor warm and the back room decent, but there’s only a tiny vent and a derelict unit upstairs in the loft. Wymack produces enough body heat to stay toasty while working in his office, but Neil shivers under his thick fur and mountain of blankets, courtesy of Allison. It’s even worse at night when the temperature drops, his own teeth chattering preventing him from sleeping.

“Come on,” Wymack says.

Neil pokes his head out from the blankets. It’s barely seven but already dark outside the loft windows, and they’re the last souls left at the shop. Wymack closed early for the weather, though Nicky was the only one working today anyway. Dan’s spending Yule with her old coven, and Matt went north to visit his mom. Wymack’s been staying late, getting everything in order for the end of the year.

Wymack waves Neil on impatiently. “Get your furry ass moving, Josten. It’s too cold for you to stay here tonight.”

Neil chitters in protest.

Wymack folds his arms, tattoos flickering like real flames. “I don’t want to come back after Yule to a weasel ice pop.”

Neil’s fur bristles. He is a _ferret,_ not a weasel.

“I have a spare room. Kevin stayed there before he moved in with Andrew.”

Neil hesitates. He’s freezing, but he doesn’t want to leave this space he’s made his.

Wymack lays out his ultimatum. “You’re not staying here. It’s either my room or Abby’s couch.”

Immediately he flashes back to Hernandez’s awful couch in Millport. He wriggles out of his nest and scurries up Wymack’s pant leg to perch on his shoulder. Wymack swears, his tattoos flaring with heat. Neil melts. His back feet slip off Wymack’s deltoid as he goes limp.

He soaks in the heat, first from Wymack and then the truck once it growls to life. It lulls him into a daze, his muscles finally relaxing for the first time since winter set in. He floats through the drive to Wymack’s place, and it takes the rush of cold air when Wymack opens the driver side door to wake him.

They go in. Wymack heads straight for the kitchen, which Neil takes as an invitation to explore on his own. The house is small but surprisingly well decorated, fully furnished, free of clutter. The master bedroom’s at the back of the house, the door cracked open, but Neil doesn’t venture inside for fear of what he might see. He does investigate the spare bedroom. It’s a bedroom in the sense that there is a bed: a twin, shoved in the corner. Other than that it’s basically a storage room, boxes stacked against the walls, a spare coffee table, floor to ceiling bookshelves stuffed to capacity. The stereotype is true. Every witch has to have their arcane collection.

Neil’s glad it’s not a dedicated bedroom. He feels more comfortable existing in Wymack’s home this way. Something obviously temporary.

He wanders back to the kitchen, following the savory scent of stew. Wymack slaps two bowls on the table as he slinks in.

Neil climbs up and sniffs at the lip of the bowl. It smells delicious, but in the handful of months Neil’s known Wymack he’s never heard of nor seen the man cook anything but pizza rolls.

“It’s safe to eat. Abby dropped it off today.”

Neil stands up on his hind legs, curls his paws, ducks his chin.

Wymack slices the air with his spoon, flinging bits of stew across the table. “She has a key and it’s perfectly normal. Enough of that.”

Neil eats his stew, having to alternate between lapping it up and pinning the bowl down with his paws since Wymack is no help and lets it skitter all over the table in revenge. It’s simple, nothing ambitious or extravagant. It’s homecooked and that makes it one of the best meals Neil’s ever had.

After he and Wymack go their separate ways. Wymack makes sure he’s warm enough then retires to bed (“I know you’re thinking it and I am not an old man dammit”) but Neil lingers in the living room. He leaves the lights off, eyes adjusted to the dark, and curls up on the narrow window sill.

The glass is chilly against his nose. He watches, unsure what exactly he’s watching for, tracing the shapes of Wymack’s yard. There’s the bulky outline of his truck in the driveway, the mailbox a sentry at the street—

A flutter in the darkness. Something on top of the mailbox.

He abandons his ferret skin, neck cracking as he slips into an owl. Vision sharpened, he tracks the movement of the intruder. They’re flapping, resettling themselves on the box, as if to prepare for a long perch. A bird, black to blend into the night. _A Raven_. It moves again, wing cocking at an awkward angle.

Neil shifts into a primate long enough to get the front door unlocked and open, then bursts into feathers. He flies headlong straight into Jean and tackles him off the mailbox. When they hit the ground, Neil overpowers him and closes his talons around the thick plumage of Jean’s neck. Jean’s squawking abruptly cuts off.

Neil waits for an appeal, an explanation. When none comes, he pecks at Jean’s chest.

_There is a reason a group of crows is called a murder, Jean. We’re much worse than an unkindness. Why are you here?_

For a second, Neil worries Jean’s been broken so badly he’s lost his universal translator, an ability that enables shifters to understand the speech of any animal, even if one’s skin isn’t in the same kingdom. It isn’t always perfect. Things like accents and dialects pose difficulties, but for the most part it’s an invaluable tool. A gift of your skins.

Riko would definitely try to break it.

But Jean answers eventually, and to Neil’s surprise, in native French. _I’ve been sent to watch you. And to warn you._

 _Warn me of what?_ Neil demands.

_That you are his, and he will come for both of you again soon._

_Why would he want you to warn me about that? Shouldn’t he want us surprised?_

Jean laughs a warbling laugh. _That does not matter. He will come, and he will take you, or he will kill you. Surprised or not, prepared or not. No, he warns you because others want you, and he dislikes having to search for what is his. Stay in your wards, Nathan—_

Neil caws, loudly and shrilly, drowning out the sound of Jean saying his name. That name. He tears away from Jean, retreating to the mailbox. Jean picks himself up off the half-frozen ground. He preens his feathers half-heartedly before giving up. Neil’s never seen that before—not in a shifter, all of them taking such pride in their skins, and especially not in a bird, their vanity inherent.

Even Kevin, who hates his raven form, cleans his feathers meticulously.

Jean says, _If I were you I’d take your curse as a blessing. Die while you can still die freely. You’ll never get the chance again._

Dying freely. Enabling the resurrection of his father, loosing him once more on the world. On Neil’s family. Lola would come for Andrew first.

_No._

They don’t have a bond but Neil doesn’t need one to feel Jean’s anger cresting. _Do you know what he has taken from me? Do you know? You and your hundred skins. He has taken all of them. Everything but this._

Jean tips his head back and _crows_. It’s not a raven’s screech or a human’s bellow, but the call of the dawn as it breaks over the horizon. In the cold dark of a winter night, Jean fills the air with the song of a rooster.

Neil swears the yard hums in answer, the night lightening until it remembers itself.

Jean doesn’t notice. He swallows the rest of the song into his raven throat.

 _He will take worse from you,_ Jean promises.

_He is not taking anything from me._

He. Riko. Nathan.

Jean regards him. _In spite of everything I know, I hope you are right._

_I am._

_Then stay in your wards,_ Jean advises. _Riko, the Butcher—these men are all the same. They don’t want to have to reach for what they want. They’ll want you close at hand when the time comes._

With that, Jean lifts into the air on wobbling wings and disappears into the night.

 

 

 _BONDS ARE POWERFUL, ONE OF THE MOST POWERFUL FORCES OF MAGIC THERE IS._  
_-WHEN YOU BREAK THEM._  
_YES. BUT EVEN WHOLE, THERE IS LITTLE STRONGER._

 

 

“Are you going to tell me what you were doing outside last night?” Wymack asks in the morning, inhaling his coffee.

Neil lays his head on his paws.

“Nothing? Not even why I heard a rooster at one point?”

He closes his eyes and pretends to be asleep.

“Shifters,” Wymack mutters.

 

 

They celebrate Yuletide at the shop with everyone still in town. It’s a hectic holiday for the magical community, and Wymack stays open late because it’s guaranteed to be one of the most profitable days of the year, everyone rushing to get last minute supplies for solstice rituals. Neil’s never seen the shop so busy. Renee and Allison are both behind the counter, and Nicky’s working the shop floor. Neil stays in the back room with Kevin, who’s in charge of preparing specialty orders. He’s never felt underfoot before, but he does today.

 _Around? Yes no,_ he asks through the bond.

 _No_ , Andrew answers, and it’s a fully formed word this time, not just a concept or emotion. _With Aaron._

Neil recalls the deal they’d made, in Eden’s what feels like ages ago. _Ten minutes?_

Andrew sends back a positive surge of confirmation, then adds, _Whole day._ It’s Andrew’s voice too, stronger than a memory, clear as if Neil’s hearing him speak. _Shouldn’t have bothered getting you a phone._

They’ve never directly acknowledged the bond before. Neil’s back leg starts thumping.

 _See you at the party_ , Andrew says, and then he’s gone, the bond going quiet.

Kevin flicks Neil between the ears. “Stop that. You’re not the rabbit from Bambi.” Neil hops out of Kevin’s reach when he tries to swat at him. “I’m going to tell Andrew you’re mooning over him and then laugh when he kicks your ass.”

Neil bites Kevin’s finger.

“Oww!” Kevin jerks back.

They agree to a truce: no more comments about Andrew, and no more biting. They both stick to it for the most part, except once when Kevin asks Neil if Neil wants to hold Kevin’s hand too, and Neil shits on his work station in retaliation. Otherwise, they make it through the afternoon rush in peace, giving Neil time to wonder about his bond with Andrew. How strangely strong it is. How they can communicate when Andrew’s human and Neil isn’t as effortlessly as if he is. Almost like the universal translator.

When they finally close up shop, Abby arrives with a car full of food. Nicky leaves and comes back with the twins and several cases of beer. Abby folds her arms at the six pack in Nicky’s arm only to switch the target of her disapproval when the twins step in, dripping wet and pale as death. Nicky, stunned, lingers for a second, but by some primitive survival instinct he shakes off the whiplash. He skirts out of her path and beelines for the back room, ecstatic to feed his cousins to the wolves.

Neil watches from the counter, relishing Abby mothering someone other than him. She makes them shuck their coats and scarves and soggy boots, then scrubs towels over their damp arms and hair. Andrew endures it with a blank, empty face, but Aaron alternates between scowling at Abby’s ministrations and appearing embarrassed whenever she ruffles his bangs.

“Neil.”

Renee smiles at him. She and Allison are wearing matching blue sweaters, though Allison’s is cut significantly lower. Thirty degrees outside, and Allison still looks like she just stepped out of a summer catalog.

“I’m leaving tomorrow night to spend Christmas with my mother, so I wanted to give this to you now. It’s a gift from the two of us, but Allison didn’t want to see you open it.” Renee glances over her shoulder. “She was afraid she might cry.”

Neil tilts his head in question, nosing at the box Renee sets down on the counter.

“She really loves giving her friends things. It makes her emotional,” Renee explains. “It’s why she shops for you. It’s her love language.”

Neil has to shift into a dog to tear the box open, determined to get it himself even though Renee offered. When he’s mangled it enough, a thin silver chain spills out, dragging a pendant the size of a quarter with it.

“It’s like the bracelet Abby gave you. So you can celebrate with us tonight, if you want.”

“It’s also fashionable,” sniffs Allison, coming up behind Renee. “I designed it myself.”

Neil peers at the pendant. Etched in the metal is a fox, ears pricked and tail curled about its legs. He pads closer to Allison, dipping his head so she can scratch behind his ears. She does, then immediately buries her face in Renee’s shoulder.

“Let’s try it out,” Renee suggests. She picks up the chain, holding it open. Neil worms his head through, and Renee lets it settle around his neck. The chain warms against his fur.

“I can’t watch,” Allison wails.

“You aren’t, babe,” says Renee. “Your face is still in my neck.”

He shifts before Allison actually starts crying.

It’s painless, as always. He slips off the counter and lands on his human feet, and his skin isn’t stiff, exactly. Not tight, but it does feel different. Like putting on a coat from the year before and having to adjust it so it fits right again. It strikes him then how long it’s been since he was human. At least a month, if not more.

He straightens, and his back pops, and there’s the familiar soreness he can never escape. That’s it. There’s no dizziness, no black encroaching on his vision, no numbness creeping through his limbs. He’s achy, but he’s okay.

He turns to thank Allison in words she can understand this time and realizes everyone is staring at him. Specifically one part of him.

Because he’s naked.

Stupid humans and their stupid clothes and stupid society.

And then there are hands on his bare skin. He tries not to tremble because that would be weird and embarrassing on top of everything else, but this is skin, not fur, and the first time his skin has been touched in so long. The hands wrap a towel around his waist and a blanket around his shoulders, then one of them presses flat between his shoulder blades over the blanket and pushes him toward the stairs. Right. He needs clothes. Everyone averts their eyes as he passes.

He throws on the last clean clothes he has, what with him largely neglecting doing any laundry since it’s not like he _needs_ to, and hurries back downstairs. Embarrassment aside, he doesn’t know how long Allison’s necklace will last, and this could be the last chance he gets to actually speak to his friends.

A few more people have shown up while Neil was gone, and the combined force of Renee’s kindness and Nicky’s enthusiasm ropes him meeting all of them. Betsy Dobson, he already knows, chatting with Abby by the food table. Renee introduces him to a girl named Katelyn and Katelyn in turn introduces him to her friend Marissa. They’re both part time at the arena and familiar enough with the team that they’re regulars at events like these. Katelyn is a regular, at least. Marissa barely remembers Renee’s name.

Katelyn’s just asked Renee about her holiday plans when Nicky appears.

“Katie! It’s been too long,” Nicky exclaims. He pulls her into a sloppy one-armed hug that Katelyn corrects gracefully, kissing his cheek and smiling gently.

“It’s good to see you, Nicky,” she says, and Neil thinks she actually means it. “Is Eric here?”

The question impossibly energizes Nicky even more. “Yes! Neil! Come on, you have to meet Eric!” He grabs Neil’s elbow and tows him across the shop, leaving Renee and Katelyn giggling by the wiggentree saplings.

Finally Nicky releases Neil in front of a small group clustered near the door. He recognizes Kevin and the twins, but he’s never seen the tall blond man Nicky launches himself at before.

“I need a drink,” Aaron mutters. “He’s going to start stripping soon, I know it.”

“He and Neil can match then,” says Kevin. He yelps when Neil kicks him in the back of the knee at the same time Andrew bends his fingers towards his wrist. Aaron, shaking his head, peels off towards the drinks. Kevin follows hot on his heels, massaging his hand.

“I wish he would go back only caring about me in relation to the obstacle course,” Neil says.

“That time is long past.” Andrew appraises him, eyes sliding up and down. “You’re much skinnier without any clothes. It’s almost concerning.”

Neil chokes on his own spit. “Abby’s, um, Abby’s putting me on a diet.”

Andrew nods. “Good. You need to eat more. Speaking of, I heard there’s cake.”

“No, thanks, I’m—”

“Oh, I wasn’t offering. _I’m_ going to get cake. You’re free to come along if you want,” Andrew interrupts. His straight face doesn’t falter, but Neil can _feel_ him laughing. Hear it in his head.

“You’re an asshole,” Neil tells him honestly. The truth of it in no way discourages him from matching Andrew’s grin with one of his own.

Nicky finally surfaces from making out with who Neil assumes is Eric shortly after Andrew excuses himself to get cake. Nicky giddily introduces Eric as his fiancé, showering him with compliments, then dives into the story of their relationship. Eric’s quick to (fondly) point out the (many) exaggerations and embellishments in Nicky’s narrative. It isn’t until Nicky mentions Faerie Land that it clicks why.

Eric. He’s one of the Fae, and the Fae can’t abide lies.

“Oh,” Eric says, “you’re him. You’re the boy. The son.”

Nicky forgoes his story, frowning up at Eric. Eric, whose human glamour falls away as he grows taller and broader and _fairer_. Attractiveness is a given of the Fae, of course; if they aren’t born beautiful, they’ll change their likeness until you can’t help but adore them. Neil knows this as a fact and as testimony from the time he spent in Faerie as a child. Eric, though, is different. He has a kind of old world air, the bearing of one of the Norse gods. He isn’t attractive so much as righteous.

Neil wonders how Eric fits in with the people here. They aren’t all liars and thieves like Neil, but they aren’t exactly pillars of virtue either.

“Babe?” Nicky lays his hand on Eric’s arm. Eric blinks, and his old god aura folds back in on itself. He shrinks down to average height, and once more he’s warm and friendly, righteousness shuttered. Nicky squeezes his hand.

Eric smiles. “Thank you, my love. Sorry about that, Neil. You are the son of the Butcher, though, aren’t you?”

His heart jackhammers in his chest. “I am. Did we meet in the past?” When he was three. When he was ten. A redheaded child in love with magic who already knew home was a place you ran from.

He’s eighteen and different now. He knows home should be a place you run to. People you run to. He doesn’t want the memory of who he used to be.

Thankfully, Eric shakes his head. “No, we never met. But news of the Butcher’s return was a hot topic in Faerie.”

“The Butcher?” Nicky repeats, voice rising an octave. “Neil, your dad has a serial killer name?”

“He’s not a serial killer,” Neil and Eric correct at the same time.

This draws Allison’s attention. She marches over in her sparkly heels. “You are killing the mood over here.” Neil snorts, earning her stink eye. She seizes his hand. “Neil, you’re dancing with me.”

“There’s no music,” he protests. She snaps her fingers, and soft string music billows from the rafters like smoke. “I don’t know how to dance.”

Allison throws her head back and laughs.

She pulls him to the center of the room, positioning his hands for him, and leads him through a dance like water, fluid swings and twirls whose pattern morphs with the melody. Every time he stumbles or steps the wrong way, she moves with him, changing the direction to accommodate or gliding around his feet, so every mistake isn’t really a mistake at all. The song segues into the next two or three times; Allison changes how they dance just as seamlessly. Eric and Nicky join them first, when the music turns more upbeat and the dance into vigorous bouncing. Katelyn and Aaron slide in during the bridge, shyer than Nicky and Eric but moving together just as naturally. Allison never tires, but Neil manages to beg off for the sake of his feet after the fourth song. Allison pouts until Renee takes his place, and it’s as if Neil was never even there.

He wanders over to the food table. Abby and Bee are still chatting nearby, though they’ve dragged Wymack into the conversation now. Marissa’s talking Kevin’s ear off in the corner. He shoots Neil a pleading look that Neil gleefully ignores. Andrew is nowhere to be seen.

Bee leans over. “He went up to the roof.”

It should probably bother Neil that he’s so transparent. “Through the annex?”

Bee nods. Neil takes another slice of cake with him in a gesture of good will.

He finds Andrew standing on top of the skylight, flatfooted in his heavy boots, daring the glass to shatter beneath him. He’s still as marble, as mountain stone. He could be a statue— _Man with No Fear_. Rooftop installation.

But that’s not the kind of quiet or stillness Andrew is meant for.

He turns and walks to the edge of the skylight, stepping without a care over the panes. He hops down, making his way over to Neil, halfway between the access door and the chimney. “Is that cake for me?”

Neil raises an eyebrow. “I don’t know, wanna tell why you were trying to punch a hole in the annex roof?”

Andrew swipes for the cake. Neil pivots, moving it behind his back, but Andrew manages to come away with a chunk of icing on his index finger. He sucks it clean and says, “I wasn’t.”

Neil dodges another attack. “Then what were you doing?”

“If I tell you, do I get my cake?”

“I never said it was for you,” Neil challenges.

Andrew straightens, arms hanging at his sides. “Whose intelligence are you trying to insult here? Mine or your own?”

“Fine, you can have the cake after you explain whatever that was.” Neil gestures vaguely at the skylight. “What was it?”

Andrew sits. Neil copies him, lowering himself down slowly in an attempt to not aggravate his joints.

“I was trying to feel something,” Andrew says. “I thought maybe—but no.”

“Trying to feel?” Neil frowns.

“Fear. Now the cake.” Neil begrudgingly hands Andrew the plate. “No fork?”

He smiles blandly. “Sorry, I’m just so used to eating without hands.”

Andrew glares. Neil shrugs. Eventually Andrew gives in and picks the cake up with his fingers. Neil leans back on his palms. If he tips his head back he can see the stars at the expense of his neck. Better than just watching Andrew eat.

“Talk.”

Neil moves his head too quickly and winces. “What?”

“Everything you haven’t been able to say while you’ve been shifted. Now would be a good time. So talk,” Andrew orders.

Neil does. He talks for as long as Andrew still has cake on his plate, and then he keeps talking while Andrew smokes through his pack of cigarettes. He talks about things he’s noticed, things he wishes he’d noticed before. He talks about how different things stand out in different skins, leaving him with this unique hodgepodge picture of who a person is. _A mosaic,_ Andrew says, _while everyone else sees a mural._ And he talks more, because Andrew _gets it,_ somehow, not just in an empathetic way but in a firsthand point of view. Neil’s met countless shifters in his travels and even more people who aren’t, and only the shifters have ever been able to understand so perfectly. So he talks, starved as he’s been for such connection with another person. He talks of things that don’t matter, and he talks of the things that matter most of all. Things even he and his mother seldom or never spoke of.

“All the glamours, I know they were for our safety. If the wrong person recognized us, it would’ve been over. But I think they were for her, too. So she didn’t have to look at me and be reminded.”

Andrew ruffles his hair. “If she looked at you and only saw him, she wasn’t really seeing you.”

“I know.” Neil picks at the knee of his sweatpants. “Sometimes all I see is him too. Especially now. And I wonder if he’s tainting me. He’s stealing my magic and my life, but maybe, I’m stealing from him.”

“Stealing what?” Andrew asks, twin plumes of smoke billowing from his nostrils.

Neil yanks at a loose thread. “His cruelty? I don’t know. His anger. I’ve always had a temper. God, so did my mom. She was a killer too. I never have—she made sure of it, she was afraid I’d _enjoy_ it—but that’s a fucking bloody legacy. I could be just like him, carving people up for pleasure.”

Andrew stubs out his cigarette. He scoots closer and cups the back of Neil’s neck, squeezing till he lifts his head to meet Andrew’s eyes. He asks, “Would you kill someone?”

Neil answers, “Yes. To protect my—to protect all of you.”

Andrew should condemn him. Instead he continues, “Are you going to go kill someone right now for kicks, or kill me for calling you an idiot?”

Neil almost smiles, but the gravity of the conversation weighs his mouth down. “No.”

“Then you aren’t him.” Andrew presses his thumb behind Neil’s ear, fingers sliding into his hair. “You won’t be him.”

Neil has to swallow around the sudden thickness in his throat. “Andrew,” he croaks.

“I shouldn’t have been the first one to tell you that,” Andrew says. “That should have been your mother, a long time ago. But, Neil, that doesn’t make it any less true. I wouldn’t waste my time on you otherwise.”

And now that he doesn’t have to break Neil’s curse, that is what he’s doing, isn’t it? Sitting here with Neil. “Why are you wasting your time on me?”

Andrew’s fingers dig into the tendons of his neck. His eyes burn. “I made you a promise.”

“To break my curse.”

“I made you a deal to break your curse,” Andrew corrects.

“What’s the difference?”

Andrew’s eyes are fire and bronze, forge and flame. “One I won’t break because I’m a man, and the other I won’t break because promises are bound in fire.”

It doesn’t really make sense to Neil then.

_(But it will later.)_

“Then what was your promise?”

“To keep you alive,” and Andrew’s voice is _rough_ and they’re so close to each other, bare inches between their faces, “so turn back into a fucking cat or something before that necklace wears off.”

With a sigh, Neil does, and they both stay on the roof. And if Andrew runs a hand through Neil’s fur, and if Neil purrs in response, no one knows but them.

 

 

-

 

 

Lola opens her eyes. “He finally shifted. I’ve got him. I know where he is.”

Romero grabs the car keys. “Let’s go.”

“No,” rasps a voice, and they both freeze. Romero replaces the keys. Lola shivers. The shade of Nathan Wesninski repeats, “No. Not yet. We’ll wait for his birthday. Let Junior be the one to give me a gift.”

“What if he runs?” Lola questions.

Nathan’s rotted mouth smirks. “He won’t. He thinks he’s safe.”

 

 

-

 

 

_BONDS DON’T REQUIRE PROXIMITY. IT KEEPS THEM STRONG AND STEADY, BUT YOU CAN BE A THOUSAND MILES APART AND STILL FEEL THEM KEENLY._

 

 

January.

Neil dreams of his father. He sees his body every time he closes his eyes. The cleaver jutting from Nathan’s chest, Mary’s blood staining Nathan’s hands. Except in his dreams, Nathan’s eyes never go glassy and sightless. Nathan stares at Neil, and Nathan _grins_.

That’s when he wakes up.

He refuses to sleep. He takes everything he can think of to stay awake, drugging himself into a jittery mess and succeeding only in building up a tolerance to caffeine and all the herbs Abby uses to keep his energy up on the daily. She threatens to sedate him if he won’t rest on his own. He lets her think that’s what persuaded him. Really it’s that he can wake up from a nightmare—he can’t get away from the hallucinations, courtesy of the sleep deprivation.

He starts going home with Andrew and Kevin. As the clock counts down, no one wants him to be alone, especially at night. ‘Home’ turns out to be the tenth floor of an apartment building six blocks west of the shop—the entire tenth floor. Apparently there was fire damage before they moved in, so Andrew bought out the floor cheap and gutted it. Now it’s one massive apartment, sectioned off into bedrooms with a communal kitchen, living room, and bathroom. According to Nicky, Andrew’s slowly buying up the rest of the building whenever the tenants move out, though Nicky’s clueless as to why. Not the income, since Andrew doesn’t rent them out, and not the space, because Andrew practically threw away the keys after signing the deed. Kevin doesn’t know either, nor does he care. The place he lives isn’t a pigsty, and that’s the extent of his interest.

Unlike Wymack’s house, Neil has no problems making himself at home at the cousins’. From the moment he stepped through the door, the wards rippling with _hello_ and _about time, we’ve been waiting to meet you,_ his reservations vanished. It reminded him of the loft in a way, the openness of the space, the sparse furnishings in spite of Nicky’s best efforts. Adding what he brings with him to the collection of stuff strewn over the apartment feels natural. He makes a nestdenbed in the bean bag that smells most like Kevin and hisses any time Kevin tries to disturb it. They make a game of claiming the territory, except neither of them treat it like a game. Competitiveness and shifter instincts combine to produce nothing less than total war.

A ceramic vase is the first casualty. Neil expects this to draw Nicky into the fray, but in a shocking turn of events it’s Aaron who swears to avenge the beloved pottery and sides with Kevin. Nicky, who’d been playing the middleman, aligns with Neil. Those are the sides until Kevin bribes Nicky and Aaron defects over a dispute involving Kevin’s dirty socks.

The war ends when they arrive home after a shift at the shop and Andrew is sitting in the bean bag they’ve been fighting over.

Depending on the day, Neil stays at the apartment with whoever isn’t working, or he rides to the shop with whoever is. On the worst days he’s immobile, the ache too strong to even move, and it’s all he can do to breathe through the pain. His veins run black and his skin quivers, the curse whispering false promises to his bonds. _Shift, shift, no more pain, shift, shift, all will be well, all will be peace._ Andrew stays close, a rock for the curse to break upon. When it recedes, Andrew returns to sculpting his rock with renewed vigor.

There are good days too, and on good days, he itches to run.

It’s a good day, four days before his birthday, when Andrew has a meeting with Bee, so Nicky has to walk to work. Neil volunteers to go with him. It’s surprisingly warm outside for mid-January, and it doesn’t take much begging for Nicky to agree to a detour through the park.

Nicky’s ambling pace is too slow. It’s not just his golden retriever eagerness demanding he run but all his skins clamoring, his muscles urging, his heart longing. He bounds ahead, restraining himself just enough to stay in Nicky’s sight. Pavement and grass fly by beneath his paws. Cool air strokes through his fur. He runs with his mouth open, letting his tongue taste the wind, his drool a breadcrumb trail for Nicky to follow. He chases a squirrel, then a bird, then attacks a shrub because it smells funny, but really because it’s _fun_. He hears Nicky laughing and barks out his own joy.

He loves this. He missed it more than he thought.

Then he rounds the corner. Then he sees the woman on the bench.

Neil sees her, he sees Lola, and he looks back at Nicky. Nicky who is Andrew’s, Nicky who is family now, Nicky who is too weak compared to the powers at play, Nicky _who Neil cannot allow to be hurt._

He trots back around the corner. Nicky smiles at him, calls his name. Neil barks an apology for what’s to come, the irrational guilt Nicky is sure to feel afterward, and pretends to let the dog win out, the way other skins have so many times before. Nicky’s seen it; he knows what it looks like. It’s less hard to replicate than it is to keep the dog in check while he’s faking it.

He tears off after a squirrel, and Nicky sprints after, hollering for him at the top of his lungs. He abandons restraint this time and loses Nicky quickly. He doubles back while Nicky’s shouting places him still on the other side of the park. Ducking into the bushes, he shifts into his human skin. The nausea hits him immediately. Sick and bleary he fumbles with Allison’s necklace, trying to draw from it, trying to summon any magic at all, to fight Lola on his own.

But he can’t even conjure a candle flame in his trembling palm.

He’s dragged out of the bushes by faces he recognizes as Patrick and Romero. The pendant slips from his fingers and disappears under Romero’s boot heel. The pain seizes him, fully-fledged and unmerciful. It drags him under as his father’s men drag him away.

 

 

_Stay in your wards._

It was _six blocks_. Only six blocks, on January 15th. They couldn’t have six blocks and four more days.

 

 

The next thing he sees is his father’s ghastly, rotted face hovering over him as a shade.

It all feels like a dream after that. He stands among the trees as they fall, catching leaves and last bits of knowing. He knows Lola has stripped him of all his belongings, all the charms Abby had fashioned for him, laid him naked on an altar like the sacrifice he is. He knows the curse is at its strongest now. He knows the tattoo on his palm is the last chance he has.

He calls the key into being, ink manifesting into metal in his hand. He didn’t know it could do that before, which makes him wonder if he’s awake, if this is real. He digs the key into his flesh and cuts his palm. He bleeds. It should be proof of something, but Neil drops his leaves and he doesn’t know what.

He bleeds all over the forest floor, hoping they will be able to track him through his blood. Hoping Betsy will be able to divine something through it. Hoping Renee will be able to scry. Anything that might work.

In a moment of lucidity he looks for his bonds, but it’s too dark. He can’t find them. _Where are you?_

But it’s Nathan’s voice that answers, _I’m here, son. And. So. Are. You._

If there’s any mercy in the world, it’s that Neil is comatose for the next four days. He hears his father, but at least he doesn’t have to see the face of the man who killed his mother.

 

 

High noon, and the sun is high, high, high overhead. Neil shivers on the altar and thinks it must be higher in the sky than it’s ever been. None of its heat reaches him, though he lays in broad daylight.

_Starless night, and the sun is gone, gone, gone from the horizon. Neil kneels in the dirt and thinks this must be the end. The earth trembles beneath his palms, the last tree groaning as its roots meet the sky._

Neil remembers winters in Russia, dogsledding through the dark in Alaska. He remembers the bite of bitter arctic winds and tears frozen on his ravaged face. He’s swum between ice floes and never been as cold as he is now. He lifts a hand up to see his surely blue fingers and barely makes out their outline instead. He suspects his vision of fault, at first, but his hand just isn’t there. He isn’t there. In this bright light he disappears, insubstantial. Shades are born from shadows, and there’s not enough left of Neil to cast one.

Lola worked fast, once she had him, and she did her job well. Too well. How is Nathan supposed to stab him, he wonders, if the blade will just pass through like smoke? Is Nathan himself solid enough to hold it?

He gets both his answers like they read his mind. Maybe they did; Neil wouldn’t be able to ward a fly off. Nathan looms over him, burly and flushed, flesh and blood. Grinning with all his teeth, because he won. He has a body, and Neil has a wisp of a soul. Lola presses her fingers to his temples with her own vicious smile and the curse swells within him, flooding his limbs and his empty chest, building necrotic prostheses in the phantom spaces where his bones used to be. He realizes for the first time how much Andrew shielded him from the full effects of its insidious, malignant nature as the curse curls into shackles around his wrists.

He should’ve thanked him for being so much more than his cursebreaker.

He is fading, _and the tree is falling,_ and Neil Josten is dying. His father raises the cleaver to finish it—

_“Neil.” Andrew grabs his shoulders, hauling his face from the dirt. He drags Neil up, fingers hard on his jaw. “Neil, you have to hold on. We’re coming, we’re—”_

_“Too late,” Neil whispers. He doesn’t know how Andrew’s here, in his once-forest. He couldn’t find his bonds._

_“No,” Andrew snaps. “Neil, you fight, you idiot, you fight. We’ll be there, but you have to fight.”_

_He releases Neil’s face and reaches into his coat—_

The tip of the cleaver kisses Neil’s chest.

_—and spills a pile of glimmering strings into Neil’s lap. His bonds. His skins. He gathers them up and his arms are shaking and he tries to hold them, all of them, all at once, but there’s too many and it’s not his arms shaking it’s_

_everything where is Andrew whereishe where is_

_THE TREE_

THE CLEAVER

_FALLING_

FALLING

_Neil screams and his bonds sing and he’s so close now, he’s just soul now, it’s easy to throw everything he has, what little he has, into the bonds in his lap. Into the shift. Into_

the fox.

The curse recoils, Nathan aborting at the last second and driving the cleaver into the stone of the altar instead. Neil scrabbles up and launches himself at Lola. He swipes at her eyes and she shrieks, arms swinging wildly, and he hears Nathan swear as she flings magic. Neil leaps off of her and darts between Patrick and Romero, who try to grab him and pay for their momentum, tumbling to the ground.

Nathan roars—Neil cackles, and it’s the laughter of a hundred skins, his bonds bright and alive, and he’s alive yet too. They can’t kill him, not like this, not with the cleaver. The spell won’t work if he’s not Nathan’s son, Nathan’s blood. And the shifting? All Mary.

Lola lashes him with tendrils of the curse made whips, snarling in his head. Trying to force his will, force him to shift. Neil laughs again. He’s been through Riko, and Lola is a timid suggestion compared to him. Even half-dead and wardless as Neil is he resists.

He dances through them, and he can feel the sun in his fur, warming him as it slips from its zenith. Their window of opportunity is closing. Lola screams and hurls a blast of magic at him. He dives out of the way; a tombstone explodes behind him. At the sight of him unscathed Nathan loses it, guttural howls ripping from his throat. Neil ducks his head at the decibel. His nostrils flare as he catches a familiar scent.

 

 

-

 

 

They arrive at the cemetery and Andrew leads the way to the Wesninski mausoleum, his body sprinting, his mind somewhere else. There’s shouting and flashing lights, telltale signs of a magical firefight, but Andrew doesn’t hear it, doesn’t see it. All he hears is the creaking of branches. All he sees is the ground and the leaves showering down around him.

He bears the trunk of the tree like Atlas, holding it up, keeping it off the ground and Neil alive.

They reach the mausoleum, the five of them most suited for war, and Matt pushes ahead of all of them, his arm sliding over his skin like water. Andrew blindly picks his way through the minefield of destroyed tombstones while Matt jumps over them, diving into the fray. He engages one of the men attempting to shoot at the fox, slamming his gun to the ground with a mega-sized astral fist. The fox yips. Their bond supplies Andrew with identities: Patrick, the one Matt punched; Romero, who Dan takes on, the air stinking of ozone; and Nathan, Neil’s father, immediately recognizable, on his knees beside an altar erected before the wooden doors. Lola, Andrew knows from the last time he was here. Wymack steps forward, but Renee touches his shoulder lightly. She glides as she moves to face Lola.

The sun glints off the bloodstone at the hollow of Renee’s throat.

“Little bloodletter,” Lola sneers, “go give someone else a nosebleed.”

Renee eviscerates her.

Meanwhile Andrew sinks to his knees. He grits his teeth. They may not be able to kill Neil while he’s a fox, but Neil’s still on the brink of death with his life force drained. Andrew _can’t_ let the tree fall.

Wymack, playing his defender, leaves him open for a second to cover Dan while she builds up an electrical charge. Nathan takes the opening to strike.

 

 

-

 

 

Neil knows his father, and even if he didn’t, he can see him, and feel him. Right now, Nathan is literally losing all control. He is pure rage as the curse starts to unweave. As he starts to unravel. Neil intimately knows Nathan’s anger—but this is different. This isn’t his deliberate cruelty, his exacted hatred. This isn’t a hit Neil anticipates because he’s been bracing for one himself.

This is wild and brutal and Nathan’s chest heaves as he whirls and throws the cleaver _at Andrew_. It spins end over end, the blade flashing, and Andrew can’t duck without dropping the tree.

 _DROP IT,_ he screams through the bond, _DROP IT._

And Andrew says, _No_.

He won’t move, so Neil moves for him. The cleaver was always meant for him, one way or another. He jumps inbetween.

 

 

-

 

 

The fox falls.

Nathan is laughing, laughing, laughing, and as the tree crumbles to ash over his back, Andrew takes hold of the part of Nathan that used to be soul, that is spirit, and shreds it.

When it’s over, the fox is dying. Andrew calls Aaron, and the rest of their team hurry over the hill to collapse in the grass around where the fox lays. Aaron and Abby and Renee all say the same thing: there’s nothing they can do now. So they all sit there, in the cemetery, backs against the Wesninski crypt, waiting. The sun crawls lower in the sky. Wymack piles up the bodies of Nathan’s goons on the other side of the cracked altar, then sits beside Abby. She clutches one of his hands and strokes Neil’s muzzle with her other. Wymack turns his face away, rubbing at the fox tattoo on the back of his neck. It’s escaped none of them, the significance of Neil shifting into a fox when he needed to fight to survive.

Andrew sits as far away as possible with Aaron. Nicky and Kevin stay closer to the others, but Aaron sticks to Andrew’s side without being told or asked. It’s not comfort, not exactly. Aaron keeps the fire in check when Andrew might let it burn him to cinders.

There’s no forest left, but the night is deep blue instead of pitch black. Andrew leans back against the log, his bond to Neil draped over his knees, thin and torn and dimming. He’s thinking of what Bee might say when the fox nudges his thigh.

The fox, not Neil.

Andrew raises his hand. The fox pushes its muzzle into his palm and a song fills his head.

A song of gratitude, _Thank you, thank you, for keeping us safe. Thank you for giving us back to him when he needed us._

A song of regret, _We don’t want to leave him, but we must go._

A song of duty, _He will be lost. You’ve found him before; you will need to find him again. Take care of him for us. Rock, good Rock, our Atlas._

A song of bonds, _There is little more powerful than bonds when you break them. We will break them, and we will heal him, so when we die he will still live. He will not understand._

And a song of promises, _Tell him one day we will run together again._

 _I will,_ Andrew sings, _I will._

He opens his eyes. One by one, the astral forms of the spirits of Neil’s bonds leap from his body, filling the cemetery with glowing blue beasts. One by one, they each flare with bright light and vanish. The cat nuzzles against Andrew, rough tongue scraping his knuckles, then disappears in a gentle pulse. The fox is last. Its spirit lays down next to the fox body, mimicking its halting breaths. Its chest rises, the light flares, and both foxes are gone.

Kevin cries as Neil’s body shifts for the final time. The others step away, retreating over the hill, herding Kevin and his sobs after them. Aaron leaves quietly as well. It’s just Andrew there for this: Neil waking up.

(A part of him itches to follow his family over the hill. Let Neil do this alone. Let Neil meet his grief in the privacy of solitude.

But that part is overruled. Andrew’s blood burns, and he has to see, has to know, his promise, that Neil is still alive.)

 

 

-

 

 

Neil wakes up. He’s just Neil.

He feels...empty and alone, like he’s lost a limb, or his sight, or his speech, something fundamental.

He doesn’t realize at first. He’s never felt such a gaping absence before, and he can’t figure out what is. Too overwhelmed, or just too scared to put a name to his loss.

He reaches for his bonds. They’re gone. All gone. Not like when he couldn’t find them. Like death. Clean breaks.

(He really is an orphan now: Nathan dead, and his inheritance from his mother gone.)

(Fitting all that still made him Nathaniel died here in this crypt.)

His bonds are gone. They left him. He tips his head back against the stone as tears prick his eyes. He’s sick of sacrifices and sick of grief and he doesn’t want to _feel_ it. He wants to just stay here in this moment of shock, this precipice, where he doesn’t know _why_. _Why_ they did it, _why_ it worked, _why_ he couldn’t just die. The tears spill down his cheeks and he’s left the moment, toppled over the edge of the abyss, because he does know. Kevin told him weeks ago.

 

  
_BONDS ARE WHAT HOLD US TO THE EARTH._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Neil dies in his animal form but his human form survives. His "death" is temporary, but if major/main character death bothers you, you can skip from "The fox falls" to "Neil wakes up."

**Author's Note:**

> you can find me on tumblr on my main at @purearcticfire and my lit sideblog @pipedream-truths 
> 
> give Georgie's art love at @flowerlezbian because it deserves it so so much


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